


Valley

by wldnst



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 18:26:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wldnst/pseuds/wldnst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's an old story: a knight, a prince, a kingdom in peril.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valley

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [Inception Reversebang](http://i-reversebang.livejournal.com/) challenge in response to an [art prompt](http://kamikaze-bunny.livejournal.com/286784.html) by the wonderful [kamikaze_bunny](http://kamikaze-bunny.livejournal.com). Her illustrations are embedded in this story. Thanks (and many of them!) go to her, as well as my excellent (excellent!) beta readers [bauble](http://bauble.livejournal.com), [gelbwax](http://archiveofourown.org/users/gelbwax), [gollumgollum](http://gollumgollum.livejournal.com), and [laria_gwyn](http://laria-gwyn.livejournal.com). They are good people. They put up with a lot of me being ridiculous, and any remaining grammatical errors, plot inconsistencies, or general stupids are mine alone.
> 
> Also available on [livejournal](http://wldnst.livejournal.com/18616.html).

  


_When Arthur dreams it’s of Cadere, of riding on horseback across the plain, alongside a braided river, through rice paddies and wheat fields ringed by mountains red and purple. It feels like flying, and the air is light and clear, and he can see for miles, from the sails of ships along the coast to the falls and well beyond. It’s beautiful, and he tries to hold on to that--the clear air, the freedom, the feeling that he’s the only person in the world in the place that he loves._

_If he sees a soul, he never touches them._

_But ‘never’ is a bit difficult, and sometimes he slips._

 

From the high peaks of the Hardel Range, if the day was clear and your vision was good and you looked to the east, you could see across Cadere to the low hills that marked the border with Morrow. Arthur did not look east, though; everything east he had seen, and so he looked west.

The mountains sheared off in harsh, wild cliffs, and Arthur’s eyes traced down the slope--rock fading into forests that were thicker than they ever were on the leeward side, and then an expanse of flat land, clustered villages, and there, a glimmer of reflected light on the edge of his vision: the ocean, as near as Arthur could figure. The air was clear, cool, and vaguely damp, and Arthur wondered if the scent he was catching was salt. Unlikely, though--too far off. He was letting fancy overtake him.

“Well,” Eames said from the horse behind him. “What do you think?”

“I think we need to keep moving,” Arthur called back over his shoulder. “No reason to stop here, if there’s nothing to see.”

“Of course, Highness,” Eames said. Until Eames, Arthur had never met a knight with such a consistent habit of deferring without really deferring at all, but as Arthur clipped his heels into Rota’s sides he could hear the clatter of Chilk’s hoofs on stone, signaling that Eames was following behind. Arthur hazarded another glance down the slopes before their path veered away from the vista, north and east, carrying them over the ridge and dipping down to the other side where the ocean would fall out of sight. This was a border patrol, not an opportunity for the Crown Prince to go sightseeing, no matter what Eames thought.

Eames did think Arthur was some sort of coddled princeling who was riding the borders on a lark, though. Arthur could tell from the way Eames looked at him when they first met, sharp and assessing, lingering too long on the things that marked Arthur as royal: the pommel of his sword, the clasp of his cloak, the fine leatherwork of his saddle. It made something curl deep in Arthur’s gut, the familiar wakening of pride in response to a challenge. 

“You ride well,” was the first thing Eames said to Arthur, and at the time he had sounded surprised.

Not that it mattered. Eames was a knight of no particular standing; what he thought of Arthur did not matter in the least. If, at the time, Arthur had done some particularly fancy rein work just to prove a point--well. He was the Crown Prince, after all, and he couldn’t have insubordinate knights, or rumors running through the ranks about his incompetence.

They broke for the evening on the eastern slope. After five days Arthur and Eames had a routine, or something like one, and Eames went to gather scraps of wood while Arthur set up the bivouac, collected water and started to put together dinner.

They settled across the fire from one another, passing skins of water and tea back and forth and exchanging hardtack and dried tomatoes and meat. It might have been companionable, if it hadn’t been like this every night since they began riding. They weren’t companions, not really, and without that their silence was just weighted with the barren potential for conversation.

“We should be able to break at the falls tomorrow,” Eames said, and Arthur glanced up at him. The firelight played across Eames’ features, catching on the short, fine hair brushed across his brow and the coarse wool of his cloak.

“I haven’t been to the falls since I was young,” Arthur said. “I’d like to see them again.” The L’Dere Falls were the wellspring of the L’Dere River, which spliced the valley in half and served as their kingdom’s primary water source.

“You’ve been to the falls, though?” Eames asked, giving Arthur pause. “They’re far from the capital.”

“For my sister’s dedication,” Arthur said. Every member of the royal family was dedicated at the falls; it was no secret, the procession from Daleth, the capital city, was part of every birthing celebration and a holiday for the citizens as well.

“Ah, yes,” Eames said after a moment, though he didn’t sound entirely certain. It made Arthur look at him again, more closely. He spoke with the accent of someone from the valley, and dressed the part: narrow canvas trousers, wool shirt and cloak, leather boots in the style favored by most of the knights, buckles up the side. But clothes were purchased easily enough.

Arthur stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed his ankles.

“I don’t know where you’re from, Sir Eames.”

“Oh, that’s not a terribly interesting story,” Eames said, grinning wryly, but there was another expression Arthur could quite name behind his eyes. “Roat. It’s a small town near the Morrow border. You won’t have heard of it.”

“We’ll be passing near it when we go east, then,” Arthur said, and Eames’ face stilled.

“Yes, I suppose we will be, Highness,” he replied. “Though I don’t imagine it will be of much interest to you.”

Arthur just glanced at him and took another swig of water from the skin.

“I’m sure you’re aware that the royal family takes an interest in every part of the kingdom,” Arthur said mildly, looking past Eames to the sun slipping over the shell of the ridgeline. “And I would be interested to know which side of the border this town of yours is on.”

“My vows are to Cadere,” Eames replied stiffly, his eyes flickering towards Arthur’s face.

“I wasn’t questioning your _vows_ , knight,” Arthur bit back. Eames’ body had stiffened, his neck and back drawn in a taut, tense line, his body like the string of a bow before the arrow flies.

And then, suddenly, all the tension drained, and Eames slouched back into himself.

“Of course not, Highness,” Eames said.

“I’ll sit first watch tonight,” Arthur said, in the tone he had learned from his father when he was quite young, the one that said he would brook no argument. Eames glanced at him sidelong before retreating to the bivouac, and Arthur took his dagger from the scabbard in his boot and ran it through his fingers. Eames was larger than he was, if it came to that, but Arthur was quicker and had been training since he was young; and that was without even taking into account his other skills.

They said strange things pool up in noble blood, because they kept so tightly to themselves, commingling only with those of equivalent status. The Cobol family of Cobol, over the mountains, had white hair and eyes clear like glass; but physical features were less interesting than the other things, the things they didn’t talk about.

The skillset that ran in his lineage, in the Cadere lineage: it killed Arthur’s cousin.

Though in truth the threat wasn’t the skill so much as the witch hunts that had been blooming east from the Morrow border for the last decade, the witch hunts that had ensured Arthur and Ariadne both were scarcely trained, and that the Cadere family’s particular talents were hidden better than any of their wealth.

Arthur spun the dagger through his fingers, watching the blade catch and gleam in the fire. The pommel was stamped with the family crest, a bear curled into itself, the fur on its broad back rising in a defensive ruff.

Arthur went out to collect more wood for the fire before rousing Eames, who woke with the lightness of someone who was not asleep at all.

“There should be enough firewood to get you through the night,” Arthur said. For a moment Eames just looked at him, hitched up on his elbows, the light casting long shadows across his face. 

“Okay,” he said, then hoisted himself up and pulled on his boots. He clasped his cloak at his throat while Arthur unlaced his own boots and slipped off his cloak, pulling it over himself as a blanket when he crawled into the bivouac.

“Sleep tight, Highness,” Eames said with a mincing salute that Arthur chose to disregard.

Arthur had rigged up the bivouac under a narrow rock outcrop, and instead of sleeping he stared up at the stone, inspecting its texture in the weak light for something to do. He knew border patrol was mostly dull. He supposed he should be grateful for the dash of intrigue, even if it did come commingled with a sardonic, perhaps vaguely resentful, and almost certainly untrustworthy patrol partner. That was part of the exercise, though; Arthur needed to know how to handle himself, needed to gain a clear vision of the kingdom he would eventually rule.

He didn’t dream. When he woke, it was to the blue light of twilight on the rocks, pink clouds further off. He couldn’t see Eames, but both horses were grazing nearby, so Eames couldn’t have gone far. Arthur was stoking the fire and frying griddlecakes when Eames reappeared, bearing a small bundle of sticks and had replaced the unease of the previous night with the veneer he usually wore, smooth and competent.

“Morning,” Eames said. “Those for me?”

“Of course not,” Arthur replied, and Eames laughed. He grabbed one from the pan and bounced it between his fingers as it cooled.

“That wasn’t done,” Arthur said as he poured more batter into the pan. He supposed pretending that Eames probably wasn’t a spy was one way of handling this.

“Tastes done,” Eames said. “You cook like this at the palace?”

“Do you think I cook like this at the palace?” Arthur asked, flipping the next cake.

“I don’t know what royals do with their spare time,” Eames shrugged.

“Nor do I,” Arthur replied.

“You’re saying you aren’t the crown prince?” Eames asked. “Because everything you’re wearing would beg to differ.”

Arthur moved his fingers to his brow to check for the circlet, but it wasn’t there. Which it shouldn’t have been, he had left it at the palace, and yet--

“I’m not wearing my circlet,” he said.

“The royal crest is on everything you own,” Eames said. “And I saw that, hand to head.” 

“There are four of us,” Arthur said, studying his own hands. “In the royal family.”

“I am aware,” Eames said wryly. “I’ve sworn to serve and protect, and we commonfolk do learn our numbers most of the time.”

“I don’t think you are,” Arthur said, looking up to meet Eames’ eyes. “Cadere, by comparison to the other kingdoms--we have nothing to offer.” He laughed a little, at that, tried to restrain the upwelling of bitterness. “We have five noble families.”

“There are other kingdoms,” Eames said. “I believe we were discussing the border last night.”

“I believe we’re on the border, Sir Eames,” Arthur said, and got to his feet. “I believe we’re supposed to be patrolling the border. And aside from the occasional diplomatic mission, I’ve rarely crossed it.”

“We’re done sharing?” Eames asked as Arthur went to saddle Rota.

“Would you like to tell me more about our neighboring kingdoms?” Arthur asked. “And your hometown on the border?”

Eames met Arthur’s gaze with an inscrutable stare, then began to saddle Chilk.

They rode in silence until a cairn-marked juncture that Eames said was where the border of Cobol, to the west, transitioned into Proclus in the north.

“They say Proclus’ last king lives in the mountains here now,” Eames said, nodding to the hills to the north. “That he came here to die but he never did.”

Arthur looked back at him but didn’t reply. Their course was shifting, downslope, into the Cadere valley and away from the mountains. A rain of small pebbles slipped down the hill, but Rota maintained her footing.

“Are there dragons, too?” Arthur asked several moments later.

“Dragons,” Eames repeated. “Next you’ll be asking me if there are witches.”

Arthur laughed, strained in a way he hoped Eames doesn’t notice.

“I wasn’t going to ask about witches,” Arthur said, trying to keep his tone just this side of prim and his voice even. “It’s a wasteland up here.”

It was true; the clouds dropped most of the rain on the west side of the mountains, and to the east the hills were mostly bare scrub, with dry air that meant the sun’s heat wouldn’t last through the night. The soil was red here. In the valley they got sufficient water for their crops; wheat and rice, mostly, but it was drawn from a complex network of irrigation from the L’Dere and snowmelts, not from rain proper.

“And witches couldn’t survive in a wasteland?”

“Why would they want to?” Arthur asked. “They need to eat, same as you or I.”

“Apparently the former king of Proclus does not need to eat, then.”

“Do you know, this king, was this Saito?” Arthur asked.

“So you _do_ know other royals,” Eames replied, a distinctly smug tint to his tone.

“He fought alongside my cousin’s husband in the war with Cobol,” Arthur said. “Knowing of a person isn’t the same as knowing them.”

“And you’ve never attended a Morrow ball.”

The witchhunts exacerbated it, but the thing between Cadere and Morrow was a quiet, deep tension, old as bones. Morrow was too large, its capital city of Vena too far, and Cadere was no threat.

“Vena is far,” Arthur said. “And the ball always happens during the harvest.”

Eames didn’t reply, and Arthur turned back to look at him. Eames’ lips were drawn in a narrow line.

“There’s tension there, then,” he said.

“You didn’t know,” Arthur stated, fact rather than question.

“There’s no war with Morrow,” Eames said.

“Cadere is small,” Arthur replied, his tone carefully mild. “I said it before.”

Eames nodded once.

They rode on.

The path was wide enough for Eames to ride alongside Arthur, which he did, though he did so without speaking to or looking at Arthur, so the only sound was Chilk and Rota’s hooves and the soft whistling of the wind.

Despite breaking for lunch they still managed to reach the falls well before nightfall, and Arthur would have probably insisted that they press on if it hadn’t been for the fact that these were L’Dere Falls, and they _mattered_ in a way Arthur would find difficult to enunciate if asked; they could not pass unmarked. And, furthermore, he needed this place, where the water plunged down into a cerulean pool, clear to the bottom, before flowing into the river. The air tasted cool, clean, green and new here, thick with the mists that rose from the base of the falls, and tasting it brought back memories of Ariadne’s dedication. She had been seven then, and Arthur fourteen, and that was the last time the family had dreamt together. They had slept under the twisting vines that grew at the base of the falls, their dreams permeated by pounding water and one another, four minds twining together like vines.

They did not break at the vines, and Arthur did not so much as glance at them; if Eames noticed it would be more information than he needed. When Eames turned downstream to the river portage Arthur followed. Even here, where the river was wide and shallow, the water swirled and surged, and in the middle Arthur needed to lean forward so Rota could swim as the water rose above his hips. Once both Rota and Chilk had footing on the far side Eames glanced at Arthur, then away, towards the trail ahead of them.

“The campsite’s not much further off,” he said, nodding towards a bend in the path that would presumably take them far enough away from the pounding of the falls to allow them to speak normally. “We can put on dry clothes there.”

The campsite was a small plateau of rock tucked into the cliff face, and it was quieter there, though the falls were still a steady hum. Eames stripped down almost as soon as he dismounted, peeling off and shucking layers of clothing and spreading his wet clothes on the rocks to dry. Arthur followed suit, digging new layers from his oilskin-wrapped saddlebags. Heat was rising off the stones in comforting waves, and Arthur looked back at Eames, who was pulling on fresh trousers.

“Should’ve gone for a swim,” Arthur said. “It’s warm enough.”

“Won’t be after nightfall,” Eames replied, looking up at him as he adjusted his trousers and shook out a shirt. Their eyes met, and Arthur suddenly remembered that he was still undressed. There was rarely any privacy on the trail, but Arthur had never felt there was any need for it; maybe because they usually dressed and undressed in dim twilight hours. But with light laying everything bare, the musculature of Eames’ chest cast in sharp relief, the tail of the chimera Arthur had seen inked across Eames’ back curling over his shoulder, the whole world unspooling around them--something Arthur had been avoiding untied inside of him, and he turned away. He didn’t know what he must have looked like, himself; slightly rumpled, he imagined, damp trousers clinging to thighs. Not like a prince, surely; not like anyone who might be king.

“Were the falls as you remembered?” Eames asked once they’d returned to dry clothes and a semblance of normalcy, Arthur prodding the fire and Eames doing something that may or may not be preparing dinner.

“The falls--,” Arthur started. “Yes. They hardly change, do they?”

“Why do you do your dedications there?” Eames said. It gave Arthur pause; he resisted the urge to turn and look at Eames.

“It’s tradition,” Arthur said, after a moment. “And an old one. Even you must know how important the falls are--the water is--for our kingdom.”

“Even I,” Eames echoed, frowning, and Arthur’s smile only had a thin rind of bitterness, so grateful was he that Eames bought the lie. It wouldn’t do to say that the falls--the vingrove--had certain properties that enhanced the skills of witches, properties that were valuable to the royal family, as witches themselves--it wouldn’t do.

But that was the reason, and that was the reason Arthur needed to get back to the falls before they moved on.

They didn’t talk much more that night, but Arthur took first watch again, and after he confirmed Eames was asleep he put on his wet clothes and went back across the river. The moon was full and ripe, and by its light the return crossing was straightforward enough. If Eames woke and Rota was gone--

But Arthur needed to get to the vingrove, and it was not something he could tell Eames he needed to do. There was a clarity there, an alignment that was not quite right elsewhere in the kingdom. 

There was, also, a figure there already. By the time Arthur saw he was too close to turn around, and his hand moved instinctively to the sword at his hip.

“Arthur,” the figure called; the voice was male, soft, like the edges had been sanded off, but even so hearing his name without honorific from a stranger made Arthur bristle. “Stand down.”

The man stepped from the grove out into the moonlight. He was older, with thinning hair combed back from his face.

“My name is Saito, Arthur. I have wanted to meet you,” he continued. “And Dominic had a message he wished for me to convey, about your cousin.” 

“Mal?” Arthur asked. Saito--it made sense. He slid from Rota’s back and strode towards him, holding out a hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you, sire.”

“No need for honorifics,” Saito said as they clasped hands. “I’m no longer king, and I feel we are friends already. If not--in times like these, we should be.” 

Up close he was younger than he looked from a distance, and Arthur wondered why he had abdicated the throne with so much life still left. 

“Times like these,” Arthur echoed softly. He knew, but to hear one say it--

“Witch hunts,” Saito replied simply.

“Mal,” Arthur said again, more slowly, this time. “Dom suspects Morrow? I thought it was an accident--”

“It was,” Saito said. “But it happened when she was walking in King Maurice’s dreams.”

“They know?” Arthur asked.

“Dominic does not know how much,” Saito said. “They don’t trust the families of witches, but they’ve never shown any inclination towards realizing the full extent to which the abilities move through blood--”

Arthur nodded. He hadn’t realized Saito had known, but it made sense--Proclus had always been more cautious than Morrow, and in their caution they made it their business to know all they could, making wisdom both their wealth and their power.

Saito waved a hand.

“That does not matter so much as the reason Mallorie was in Maurice’s dreams,” he said. “She and Dominic uncovered evidence that Morrow was planning an invasion. She intended to--shift his opinions.”

“Oh,” Arthur said, his voice draining out of him, grain from a bag overfull. “Oh.”

Cadere was small. They had their--ways--of protecting themselves, but Morrow was large, and their hunger was outpacing their size, and perhaps outpacing Cadere’s skills as well.

Saito nodded.

“She was concerned that the king and queen would not wish to be involved, because of the hunts,” Saito continued. “But now it is clear there is no other way, and as Dominic cannot walk himself--”

“Where is my cousin?” Arthur asked. Saito turned aside.

“He is with me,” he said, and Arthur looked at him sharply.

“And he didn’t come himself?” he asked.

“His wife has died,” Saito said. “There are implications. He wished to stay with his children.”

“And his children are with you, also?” Arthur asked.

“We will be old men together,” Saito said. “Though some thought I was old already.”

It’s not what Arthur expected, though the children did explain why Saito abdicated the throne; adopting another’s children would be considered a threat to Proclus’ established heirs, and an inappropriate one at that. He nodded in tacit acknowledgement.

“Thank you,” he said. “I will do what I can.”

Saito reached forward to clasp his hand again.

“If you need us, you may walk our dreams,” Saito said. “You are welcome.”

Arthur touched his own forehead in acknowledgment. His training was lacking, but he had been taught the old traditions; they were rarely followed, these days, but there were few whose dreams he was welcome in and it would not do to be impolite about it.

It made things easier to be welcomed. Safer, but also simpler, especially if one wished to walk another’s dreams across a great distance.

“But you came here to dream,” Saito said abruptly. “I will not distract you further. It may do you well.”

Arthur wasn’t sure if he had the time, but he nodded. Saito began to leave, and then he turned back.

“Your companion,” he said. “Do you trust him?” 

“He’s a knight of the crown,” Arthur said.

“That’s not the same as yes,” Saito replied.

And then he turned and left, walking towards the western border trail and then up into the mountains, moving like some mountain creature--a goat, a gazelle--and not like an old man at all.

Arthur went to the grove, though he was not sure he had the time; nor was he certain he should, but he did. Dreams here had an unmatched clarity; it was like nothing he had experienced save for drinking from the falls themselves, these dreams sweet and clean and real.

He didn’t know when he would be back, and for that reason alone Arthur tethered Rota and stepped into the grove. Moonlight lanced through the tangle of vines, well on their way to being laden with grapes. Sleeping here should have been uncomfortable, but Arthur went to dip his hands into the thin channel from the falls that ran through the grove and drank, then went to the table rock in the center and curled himself up, and he was asleep as soon as his head touched the smooth stone.

 

_He is underwater. Bubbles swirl upwards, and Arthur is rising with them, limbs flailing. His vision is green-blue, blue-green, every iteration of cyan, marine, jade, olive--and this spectrum seems sufficient, complete in itself._

_There is no surface for him to break through, no gasping for air. He swallows bubbles, rises further still, and then he’s plunging down._

_The light doesn’t shift, but Arthur can feel himself descending until he is looking out across Cadere, as it is, and perhaps he’s not swimming at all but flying through a strange, saturated sky._

_It’s hard to explain, but there are towns he knows and towns he doesn’t, and he drifts through them all, and they are all there and populated, and every face is distinct, one from the other. He does not touch a one of them, but floats above, drifting like a boat unmoored._

_He does not touch a one of them, until he sees Eames, Eames on his feet and walking, then Eames at a table gambling with dice, his eyes bright and laughing and completely incapable of seeing Arthur. Then Arthur sinks lower, falling through the thatch of a building’s roof as if it is air, and then he places his fingers on Eames’ temples and goes further in._

_Inside Eames the other colors of the spectrum reassert themselves, cool and warm commingled. Arthur is standing, now, feet planted on the ground, looking out over low green hills, which unfurl before him in undulating waves. There is a house at the center of the scene, a coarse red thing, and it is there that Arthur goes, crossing the ground more quickly than he could if he were walking. And yet he is walking._

_There is nothing inside the house, or there is something, but Arthur cannot see it--he can feel it, as if it were behind him at every turn. He’s see a woman, for just a moment, and she carries with her a burst of smoke and heat, Arthur wheels around for a better look, but even so--there is nothing to see. The walls seem nigh to invisible, and they may well be; they are fading, everything is--_

_Arthur is swimming._

_Eames is awake._

 

Eames was awake.

Arthur woke himself with a jolt. He fumbled too quickly to his feet, scuffed them on the rock, slipped his fingers as he untied Rota’s reins and rode--too quickly, too heavily, with too much of every uncontrolled thing he tried to avoid--to the river portage and the campsite. The night was cold and the water was cold in turn, and Arthur was not sure how he would explain this--not keeping watch, going back across the river at night. One didn’t do innocuous things at night. He should have thought of that. People who skulked about doing things in secret did so because they _had secrets_.

So Arthur rode. Even as he did some part of him thought it was _good_ to ride Rota like this--she was fast and strong, and this was the type of riding they didn’t do on long rides, for Rota’s sake as well as Arthur’s, but it was the type of riding that was akin to flying, or maybe dreaming, and with Rota moving under him, leaning forward, his mind roiling, Arthur fled through moments where he thought this might be okay, after all.

But Eames was awake, and Arthur discovered nothing in his dream, and Eames was awake.

Rota’s hooves were pounding, and the campsite began to coalesce against the horizon: a thin smolder of a campfire, the silhouette of Chilk, ears pointed towards them.

When Arthur careened into the campsite, Eames was sitting by the fire with his elbows heavy on his knees. He didn’t turn when Arthur arrived, didn’t so much as flinch.

“Go for a swim?” he asked, once Arthur dismounted and was standing behind him.

“I wanted to go to the vingrove,” Arthur said. It was half the truth. “Where we do the dedications.”

“At night?” Eames asked. Arthur couldn’t read anything into his voice. Arthur moved around the fire until he was standing opposite Eames, but Eames’ face was equally inscrutable.

“Yes,” Arthur said, firm.

“And if someone had come?” Eames asked. He looked up at Arthur, and their eyes met. “Jackals? You would’ve been sitting watch?”

“Nothing happened,” Arthur replied, but even he knew that was a weak defense.

“ _Nothing happened_ ,” Eames hissed, getting to his feet. He moved around the fire like he was prowling, like a heavy animal, all muscles under skin. “You don’t--”

Eames paused and inhaled, like there was a weight on his chest.

“I know you’re a prince, _Highness_ , but you can’t just go wherever your fancy takes you. This isn’t some Grand Tour. We sit watch for a reason. You know--”

“This isn’t a Grand Tour,” Arthur said. “I’m not some dilettante.”

“Then stop acting like one,” Eames said. He was close now--Arthur hadn’t realized how close, but he could feel Eames’ breath on his face, and Eames’ face, illuminated by firelight, was close enough that Arthur’s eyes needed to flicker from nose to lips to eyes to chin to see the whole of it.

“There was some crown business I needed to attend to,” Arthur said, because it was the only thing he could say. “Knight.”

Eames’ eyes went flat, and he stepped back from Arthur, pulling the warmth his body radiated back and away.

“You’re pulling rank on me,” Eames said and he barked a laugh that sounded like it physically pained him. “You’re pulling rank on me.”

Arthur watched as Eames moved back around the fire, dropped to his haunches and peered up, studying Arthur from a distance.

“You can sleep, sire,” he said, his tone turning the words into the worst kind of insult. “I’ll sit watch.”

Arthur heard the criticism implicit in that comment, and there was a piece of him that wanted to rail against it, as if that would accomplish anything--and there’s a part of him that was just relieved that Eames didn’t know where Arthur was when he was gone, that he was walking Eames’ dreams, even if he didn’t find anything there.

He retreated to the bivouac, stripped his wet clothes and curled himself up on the sleeping mat and pretended to sleep until he didn’t need to pretend anymore. It seemed the best of the possible options.

Morning came too quick, and Eames was there, cooking rice. He wouldn’t meet Arthur’s eyes, and Arthur knew any trust Eames had had been frittered away. Or perhaps not frittered: spent, but worth the price. The line was fine, there, and Arthur wasn’t entirely sure where it was drawn.

Saito had asked Arthur whether he trusted Eames, and Arthur didn’t know, and now their relationship had taken a step backwards. Or maybe it had just put everything Eames already thought--everything Arthur _suspected_ he thought--on the surface. More honest, if nothing else.

Arthur closed his eyes and inhaled deeply before getting to his feet, going to Eames and accepting a plate of risotto, thick with cinnamon and raisins.

They didn’t talk. Eames didn’t say anything, and Arthur didn’t know anything to say. Trust had never come easily to Arthur, and it came less easily now, and Eames--Eames was, for the most part, inscrutable, and the chimera inked across his back had to mean something, so maybe they were both correct in their distrust, one of the other.

Cadere meant chance in the old tongue, which is something no one ever mentioned. There were stories about why they named the valley that, why the royal family bore the name, but none of them were true. It was happenstance, really. And so was this: Arthur here, the cadence of Rota’s hoofbeats beneath him, Eames at his side. They would be wheeling south, soon, and then they would approach the Morrow border.

Arthur needed to decide. He needed strong allies. And if Eames was not--he did not need that. Saito was right.

Something twisted inside him, grew like a vine, uncertainty and certainty commingled. Eames was keeping his profile steady, staring ahead and not at Arthur, and so Arthur looked at him, traced his brow down to his nose, the full bloom of his lips.

“Why did you become a knight?” Arthur said, for something to say.

Eames was silent for so long that Arthur wasn’t sure whether he had heard the question. When he did speak, he wouldn’t meet Arthur’s eyes.

“Because none of the masters in my town wanted to apprentice the son of a witch,” Eames said, and Arthur could feel his eyebrows rising.

“She wasn’t,” Eames added, quick and bitter. “But that didn’t stop them from burning her.”

“But you don’t believe in witches,” Arthur said, because apologizing seemed like such a small thing, and he wasn’t sure his sympathy was wanted.

“I’ve never met one,” Eames said, and Arthur nodded once.

“They--” Arthur paused. “They would be sorry, about your mother.”

“You know this?” Eames asked, then shook his head slowly. “I don’t blame them. I came here to escape those I do blame. To hurt them, if I could.” 

“I know,” Arthur said, looking aside. “Because _I’m_ sorry.”

The silence was palpable, and so heavy that Arthur found it difficult to lift his eyes to meet Eames’. When he did Eames face was papered over. Still, Eames looked like he was--waiting. Expectant.

It came out in a rush.

“Last night,” Arthur began. “I want back to the falls. There is a place, there. The vingrove. And Saito of Proclus was waiting for me. He’d been in touch with my cousin--Lady Mallorie’s--husband.”

“Lady Mallorie died recently,” Eames said, as if to confirm.

“Yes. She was walking the Morrow king’s dreams,” Arthur said. “Maurice. She caught wind of plans for an invasion, and she was trying to convince him otherwise. It didn’t work. Saito was telling me because my parents--because of the witch hunts--they don’t walk anymore. He and Dominic thought I could do something.”

“Your whole family, then?” Eames asked, and if Eames was anything other than what he said he was, anything other than loyal to Cadere, the small, stiff nod Arthur granted to him was some kind of death sentence.

“Maurice’s advisor, Browning,” Eames said softly. “He’s the one behind the witch hunts. Behind most everything, really.”

Arthur let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“That’s why you left Morrow, then,” Arthur said that evening, when they were seated by the fire and passing food back and forth. “Because of your mother.”

“I had my reasons,” Eames replied. “But you were right to guess that I’m from Morrow. And I am not supportive of the hunts, though I thought--”

“You thought they were a problem because witches weren’t real,” Arthur finished for him. “And what do you think now?”

Eames shook his head.

“The hunts are awful,” Eames said, before turning to meet Arthur’s eyes. “I don’t know about witchery, though.”

“Dreamwalking,” Arthur corrected. “We call it dreamwalking.”

“Fear drives the hunts,” Eames continued. “Because we don’t understand what a witch might be capable of, because we hardly know what you can access. Is it really better, to be so secretive? You expect us to trust the things you keep hidden?”

“You want to know, then,” Arthur said.

“Yes,” Eames said. “I can’t imagine you expected any less.”

“Shall I tell you or show you?” Arthur asked. That Arthur had already walked Eames’ dreams was not something Eames knew or needed to know; Arthur took nothing, left nothing, it didn’t matter. It was perhaps, Arthur would acknowledge, not the best thing to hide--but no one trusted a witch. No one ever wanted to.

This was easier.

“You could show me?” Eames asked.

“We’ll have to sleep together,” Arthur said, and Eames quirked one brow before Arthur added, flatly: “With no one on watch.”

“Tell me what it entails,” Eames said.

“What do you know?”

“You can get in our dreams and influence us. And take things--secrets, things deeply suppressed.” 

“More or less,” Arthur replied. “Less, really, because it’s not as simple as that. Each dream is encrypted to the individual dreamer, so just being able to get in the dream doesn’t mean we understand what we see there. And changing behavior is even more difficult--almost mythical, it’s been so long since anyone has done it.”

“But that’s what your cousin was trying to do.”

“Cadere is a small kingdom,” Arthur said after a moment, then suppressed a bitter laugh at this thing which had become his refrain. “Family lore holds that dreamwalking is how we’ve protected ourselves all these years. When any of the neighboring kingdoms develop an interest, we go in and change their minds. But it’s been awhile since there’s been any need--Cobol, two generations ago--so.”

“You don’t really know how,” Eames said, and Arthur nodded once.

“And my parents have been avoiding it, because of the hunts,” Arthur said. “We should have seen it coming. They’ve never needed to, and Ariadne and I--we aren’t even properly trained.”

“Ariadne--the princess?”

“My sister, yes,” Arthur said, then allowed himself a wry grin. “You could’ve at least made an effort to learn something about your adopted kingdom.”

“She’s young, though, isn’t she?” Eames asked.

“Thirteen summers,” Arthur said. “It’s easier to start young. The mind is more flexible, or more comfortable with it--it’s hard to explain.”

“You must have records, for training,” Eames said. He was toying with his reins, twisting them between his fingers.

“Witchhunts, even before this most recent spate, meant it was better to keep those things hidden, or not to keep them at all,” Arthur said. “There’s a little, but not much, and most of what is written is very vague. Making it clear that this is a family trait--it’s a dangerous thing.”

“And yet here I am,” Eames replied.

“Here you are,” Arthur echoed. He could see Eames assessing him, and Arthur wondered if he’d been far too trusting. He was, after all, a coddled princeling, a dilettante with the royal crest on him like a brand. He had been prepared for things, but not for this. 

“You have as much reason to want the witchhunts gone as I,” Arthur said.

“Not quite so much,” Eames replied. “But enough.”

“Come with me, then,” Arthur said, deciding he may as well complete this. “Back to the falls. I have permission to walk Dominic and Saito’s dreams, and we should be able to reach them from there. I’ll pull you in. You can see a dream, I can collect more information.”

“Do we have the time?” Eames asked.

“Time passes differently in dreams,” Arthur said. “But I hope you don’t mind crossing the river again.”

When they reached the vingrove the grapes were rich and ripe, tangled among curls of vines. Eames looked at the space strangely: the vines, the sleeping rock.

“I didn’t notice this place before,” he said. “How did I not notice it?”

He looked at Arthur accusingly, but Arthur just shook his head.

“People don’t always see what they don’t know what to look for.”

Eames reached up and plucked a grape, popped it into his mouth and sucked on it.

“These are--” he said, reaching for another one and holding it out towards Arthur. Arthur was still watching the pucker of Eames’ lips, which would be his excuse, if anyone were to ever ask him why he took the grape with his mouth instead of his fingers, holding it between his lips for a moment before biting down and letting the bitter juice explode on his tongue. Eames watched him with steady eyes, then turned and spit the seeds of his own grape out before taking another.

“Are they special?” Eames asked.

“No,” Arthur said, looking at a bundle of grapes, heavy on the vine. “They’re grapes.”

For some reason that had seemed profound at the time.

“Unusually good grapes, though,” Eames said, plucking another. “Have you ever made them into wine?”

“No,” Arthur said.

“We should try that,” Eames said.

“We should go to sleep,” Arthur said.

“On the rock,” Eames said, nodding towards it.

“On the rock,” Arthur said. “But first we drink.”

“Of course we do,” Eames said.

So they did.

 

_He is underwater, and bubbles swirl upwards around him in wild plumes. When he swims down, Eames is there, standing on the ground but looking at him--meeting his eyes. Arthur offers a hand, and pulls him up._

_They swim north with strong, languid strokes, over the ridgelines of the northern mountains, towards Proclus._

_Saito is not waiting for them, but Dom is, standing and looking south like a sentinel. Arthur ducks and presses his fingers to Dom’s temples, indicates for Eames to follow, and they’re there, in an estate with polished floors and wrought railings, ringed by golden fields. Dom is not there, until he is, standing besides them with his hands clasped behind his back._

_“Saito said to expect you,” he says, nodding to Arthur. “But not you.”_

_“This is Sir Eames. We need to know about Mal,” Arthur says. “What she was doing. What she knew.”_

_“No more than Saito told you,” Dom says. “She was dreamwalking Maurice.”_

_“And her death?”_

_“She went in too far,” Dom says, looking away. “Too far into the dream, too deep. Maurice--Maurice. He was prepared for her.”_

_“Prepared for her?”_

_“She could no longer distinguish the dream from reality,” Dom says, and there’s something frantic in his eyes when they meet Arthur’s. “She--”_

_“She could tell you herself,” interjects a soft voice from behind, and Mal is there, padding barefoot through the halls, a loose robe tied around her waist._

_“Don’t,” Dom says, quick and sharp, and it’s only then that Arthur sees the short blade clutched in her left hand, and when Arthur looks up to her eyes they’re flat and dark. Arthur isn’t sure who she’ll move for first--her eyes are ranging between the three of them, passing harsh judgment._

_“Sometimes dreams are more lovely than life,” she says. “Who wouldn’t want to stay?”_

_She’s reaching towards Dom with her empty right hand, placing it on his shoulder._

_”But Maurice?” Arthur asks, to restrain himself--this is not Mal, this is not._

_“The mind has its own defenses,” Mal says, and then the knife is flying from her hand to Arthur’s heart._

_It’s Eames who knocks Arthur aside, Eames who Arthur finds himself staring up at saying, “I would’ve just woken up.”_

_“Be careful about the water,” Mal says. “Maurice wants the--”_

 

And then Arthur was awake, blinking the sleep from his eyes and staring up at the tangle of vine and sky above him.

“We didn’t get to Saito,” he said.

“Nice cousin you have there,” Eames replied after a moment.

“That wasn’t my cousin,” Arthur said.

Arthur could hear Eames roll over on his side, could feel his eyes on Arthur’s face.

“It wasn’t her. These things happen in dreams,” Arthur said.

“What was she?” Eames asked.

“A shade,” Arthur said, fixing his eyes on the sliver of the moon. “They dreamt together while she was alive, and her mind left an imprint on his, and now she haunts him.”

“You make it sound so simple,” Eames said.

Arthur rolled over so he was facing Eames, staring at the spiky shadows Eames’ eyelashes cast on his face.

“It’s not,” he said.

They lay there like that for a few moments, breath flowing in and out.

“Saito,” Arthur said.

“We’re going to do that again?” Eames asked.

Arthur paused, then shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No, we should move on. We have enough. I spoke to Saito last night.”

“Is dreaming always like that? Violent?” Eames sat up and hooked his arms around his legs. 

“It’s never like you expect it to be,” Arthur said. “It always lies a little, or a lot. Don’t believe everything you dream.”

Eames looked at Arthur for a long, lucid moment, and then turned towards the horses, their reins and tethers.

“What was she saying?” Eames asked at midday. “About the water?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur said.

“That might be something we want to know,” Eames said.

“We?” Arthur asked, turning to look at him.

“We,” Eames said, without looking away. “Highness.”

“My name’s Arthur,” Arthur said, and they kept riding. 

They approached the Morrow border the next day. The hills became low and green, recalling those Arthur saw in Eames’ dream, and there were settlements closer to the border; they avoided those, mostly to avoid anyone recognizing Arthur. Not that--they probably wouldn’t, but it was an unnecessary hassle, and Arthur was neither prepared nor willing to be his political self, the charming and genial crown prince. This wasn’t a royal tour--it was a training circuit. He didn’t have the circlet, anyway, and the circlet marked him even more than the royal crest on the clasp of his cloak, the pommels of his sword and dagger.

“How plain is it?” Arthur asked. “That I’m royal?”

Eames glanced at him sidelong.

“About as clear as it is that I’m not originally from Cadere.”

“So if you speak with me you’ll know,” Arthur said, and Eames shrugged.

“Most will know when they see the bear.”

And so they kept to the outskirts of the towns, occasionally passing a cart or a farmer in his fields. At night they could see the soft light of towns on both sides of the border in the distance.

“How do you access someone’s dreams?” Eames asked one evening. He was lounging, stretched out on a soft expanse of grass with his head propped up on his hands.

“They have to be nearby,” Arthur said. “Most of us have a relatively small radius, but the grove by L’Dere expands it. That’s probably where we’d need to go to get to Morrow.”

“Or you could go to the Morrow ball,” Eames said.

“We never go,” Arthur replied, then peered across the fire at Eames. “You talk a lot about the Morrow ball.” 

“It’s a significant event, in Morrow.”

“Are you jealous? Do you want to go to the ball?” Arthur asked.

“It’s an event, in Morrow,” Eames repeated. “Everyone knows about it. There are festivities.”

“The harvest is a significant event here, and there are festivities,” Arthur said, and Eames snorted.

“There’s no mystique to harvest festivals. No mystery,” Eames said. “You never had any interest in attending the balls?”

“By the time I knew about them I was too old to be especially interested,” Arthur replied. “So, no.”

“It would help to access Maurice, though,” Eames said.

“It would attract attention if any of my family were to attend after avoiding it for so long,” Arthur said. “And I _like_ the harvest festivals.”

“Only because you don’t participate in the harvest,” Eames said.

“I participate in the fertility rites in the spring,” Arthur said, and Eames raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Should have known, what with your being witches,” Eames said, then leaned forward and allowed his expression to slide into something that might be termed lascivious. “Pagan nation and that. Fertility rites, though--what does that entail?”

“That information’s only available to participants,” Arthur said, ignoring Eames’ skeptical glance. “Witches only.”

Arthur lifted his shoulders against the cold and looked off to the west. The sun had been below the horizon for long enough for the last of the twilight to have burnt off. Someone should have claimed night watch and someone else should have been getting some sleep.

“I’ll take first watch,” Arthur said.

“Enjoy,” Eames replied, and twirled his fingers into a mock salute.

The hills got lower and greener still as they approached the sea, and the next morning the sky was free of clouds and the greens turned jewel bright. They were riding more slowly than they had in the far reaches of the valley, two abreast, which offered the opportunity for languid conversations that trailed off for hours at a time, then resumed without warning. And so Arthur learned that Eames had actually worked the harvest, in addition to apprenticing briefly to the swordsmith in the capital before entering the service. In exchange, Arthur offered pieces of his own history: the pranks he and Ariadne played on every tutor they ever had, the long, strange saga of the castle cat.

Their conversation was dogged by the unspoken truth that Arthur was a prince and Eames was not even noble. There was less striation between the nobility and the rest of the citizens in Cadere than there was in the neighboring kingdoms, but that didn’t change the bare facts, or the bears at Arthur’s throat and hip. And Eames wasn’t from Cadere to begin with, and he had a complex about royalty, spoken in the tight, uncomfortable twist of his lips whenever he used Arthur’s title.

“We’re almost to Roat,” Eames said, nodding at the trail ahead of them. “We should dip over the border.”

“Just dip over the border?” Arthur asked. “Any reason?”

“I know an alchemist,” Eames began, and Arthur raised an eyebrow. “He’s good. He has some theories about witchcraft, but he’s never worked with a proper witch.”

“And you think?”

“He could help,” Eames said. “He’d go with us, no questions asked. The alchemy business isn’t that good.”

“That’s a surprise,” Arthur muttered, and Eames shot him a grin.

“The _witch_ is skeptical of the alchemist?” Eames said.

“People believe in witches,” Arthur said. “And witches generally aren’t self-proclaimed.” 

“Don’t I know,” Eames said, his flat tone undercut by something deeper. Arthur turned to look at him, but Eames was looking directly ahead, pointedly avoiding eye contact.

“I didn’t--” Arthur said, but Eames shook his head.

“I know.”

“You could blame us, you know,” Arthur said, and now he looked away, towards the dip of the nearby hills, funneling down into a grassy hollow. He thought he saw a rabbit. 

“I could,” Eames agreed. “But I doubt that would help much. You’re not the ones getting innocents caught in the crossfire,” Eames continued. “It’s not even really crossfire, is it?”

“So you protect the innocents?” Arthur asked. He hardly felt innocent, and he wondered if Eames was reading his mind when he caught Arthur’s eyes again.

“You tell me.”

Eames’ eyes were darker than Arthur thought they were, and a color he didn’t immediately have a name for. Their eyes held for a moment before Eames wheeled Chilk off the path and towards Morrow, which was a place Arthur would rather not be going. Even if most of the witchhunters wouldn’t know a witch from a pig’s backside, they were still _there_.

Eames waited for Arthur when he slowed.

“They wouldn’t know you for a witch if you wore a sign around your neck,” he said.

“And the Cadere crown prince?” Arthur asked. Eames shifted his body in a gesture that might have belied uncertainty.

“We probably won’t meet anyone,” he said. “Except Yusuf, and he wouldn’t recognize you for the crown prince _or_ a witch with a sign around your neck.”

“And you say he knows things about witches,” Arthur said.

“He told me everything I told you,” Eames said. “Except he thinks all witches are female, which--”

Eames gives Arthur a look that’s just this side of accessing and lingered uncomfortably on Arthur’s torso, then dropped to the place where Arthur’s legs splayed across Rota’s back.

“Which is plainly false,” Arthur interjected. “Though that one’s quite common. Don’t know where it came from.”

“Your feminine hips, perhaps,” Eames said wryly, then clipped his heels into Chilk and disappeared over the next ridge before Arthur could retort.

Which was for the best, because Arthur didn’t have a retort, except with a hand gesture that a stablehand taught him when he was fifteen.

Arthur made it at Eames’ back, despite himself, and followed Eames across the border.

Nothing happened.

It was not a surprise. The border was unmarked--no one sat guard at the crossing, and they were not on an established route. But Arthur held his breath anyway and waited for the blow.

It was not long before things began to look familiar, though it took Arthur a few moments to place where the memory was from. Hills looked more or less the same everywhere, but these ones had a recognizable cast, low slopes, a brush of gold, trees growing close to the ground in the places where Arthur expected them to be.

It was when he saw the red house, sagging a little more than Arthur expected it to, that Arthur realized he was in Eames’ dream.

“Where are we?” he called downslope to Eames.

“Morrow,” Eames said.

“No--” Arthur said. “Where are we _specifically_?”

Eames reined Chilk in, and peered up at Arthur as he and Rota approached.

“You been here before?”

“No,” Arthur said. “--no. But this is where you’re from, isn’t it?”

Eames wound his hands through the reins and tightened his grip before turning up the hill, away from the house and the hollow.

“No one’s from here,” he said. “Been abandoned for years.”

Arthur followed, because it was all he could do.

The town, when they reached it, was a small cluster of stone and brick buildings collected around a green village center. Eames aimed for a building on the fringes, painted no color found in nature, which was a sure sign of an alchemist’s meddling. They approached from the back and hitched their horses there before Eames went to the door and tapped it five times in quick staccato.

The door swung open after enough time had passed to make it seem like the shop might be unoccupied. The man on the other side peered out without inviting them in.

“Eames,” he said, then glanced over at Arthur before looking back at Eames with a question in his eyes. “And--friend.”

“Arthur,” Eames said curtly. “Yusuf.”

“Pleasure I’m sure,” Yusuf said, running one hand through his dark curls and pulling them up on end. “By which I mean I doubt it. It’s been awhile, Eames.”

“Oh, but I think you’ll like this,” Eames said, and Yusuf sighed.

“Come in then,” he said. “But my letting you in is not a promise. Of anything.”

Eames made Yusuf bolt the front door, and then the pair of them leaned against the counters and descended into some sort of strangely combative combination of negotiating and reminiscing. Arthur kept one ear on the events while wandering the dimly lit shop, which was full of corked ceramic jars made from red clay and thick volumes bound in dark leather. 

Arthur caught snatches of conversation: “I am not,” Yusuf was muttering. “For your latest--,” but then Eames said “a witch.” Arthur expected Yusuf to look at him like he would like to cork his parts up in bottles, but instead Yusuf just looked at Eames more intently and said “Cadere?” voice rising on the last syllable.

Eames nodded, and Arthur sidled over to hear better.

“It’s away from the hunts,” Eames said. “She didn’t want to come to Morrow.”

‘She?’ Arthur mouthed at Eames.

Yusuf looked around the shop.

“Business has been poor,” he said. 

“It always is,” Eames replied. “So come with us.”

“And you’re not going to explain your _friend_ to me?” Yusuf asked, jerking his chin in Arthur’s direction. “How do I know I can trust him?”

“Arthur, my traveling companion,” Eames said. “I introduced you already.”

“I never thought you were one to take up with nobility, Eames,” Yusuf said, arching an eyebrow. “A bit more polished than your usual type, isn’t he?”

“We’re riding border patrol,” Arthur said flatly. “Do you want to come with us or not?”

“Right charmer, you are,” Yusuf said, then sighs. “I’ll do it. I just need some time to pack.”

“Do you still have the mule and the cart?”

“Farley,” Yusuf said. “The mule’s name is Farley, and, yes, that’s what I’ll be taking.”

“You’ll have to meet us on the other side if the border if you’re planning to take the main roads,” Eames said.

“You haven’t changed a whit,” Yusuf said. “Sneaky bastard, leaving me before we even start.”

“There’s a river ferry, a day past the border crossing,” Eames said. “We can meet there.” 

Yusuf made a vague, exasperated gesture.

“And we’ll just be going then,” Eames said. “Borders need patrolling, don’t they?”

“Of course,” Yusuf said. “ _Border patrol_.”

“Right then,” Arthur said, and made a move for the back door. He was not completely obtuse, and Yusuf was hardly subtle; he understood what Yusuf had been implying, and he was quite happy to shunt it to the back of his mind and then go back to border patrol and easy companionship. Eames hadn’t expressed any especial interest in him; and if he did, that would be--complicated. Arthur had considered _it_ , noticed the slope of Eames’ shoulders and the musculature of his arms, the fine curve of his ass, but Arthur didn’t need those flurries to take on the character of possibility. Besides, Yusuf’s comments suggested Eames was a bit of a cad.

“Yusuf just does that,” Eames said when they’re back on horseback. “We’ve known each other for a long time. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not,” Arthur says. “Worried about it, I mean.”

“Are you sure, because I know some--”

“Do you just ride border patrol, over and over again, and not pay attention to anything else that happens here? Did you not ask around court for gossip when you heard you’d be riding with me? Really, Eames, because you are woefully ill-informed.”

“Oh,” Eames said, drawing out the syllable and giving Arthur a lazy, hooded glance. “Oh. That’s interesting.”

“Interesting isn’t the word I’d use,” Arthur said.

“What word would you use, then?”

“Irrelevant,” Arthur said, tightly. He could feel his legs tensing around Rota’s back, and Rota responding in turn--he tried to relax the clench in his muscles. 

“Irrelevant, is it?” Eames asked.

“Yes,” Arthur said. “I thought you said Yusuf wouldn’t know me for a prince.”

“Well he didn’t know you for a witch, did he?” Eames asked sharply. “Maybe he wouldn’t know you for a prince if you didn’t act like one.”

They were quiet for awhile after that, and they didn’t pass through the hollow with the red house on their return to the border. When they were back on the border track Arthur asked Eames how long he’d known Yusuf, for something to say.

“Grew up together,” Eames replied. “More or less, though Yusuf went off to the city to work with an alchemist for a few years. And not long after he came back, I skipped the kingdom, so that was the end of that.”

“The end of what, exactly?” Arthur asked.

“I haven’t seen him since I left Morrow,” Eames said. “I don’t know what his life is like now.”

“And yet you trust him enough to bring him on this?”

“Yusuf is loyal to alchemy and money,” Eames said, shrugging. “It makes him trustworthy, in a strange way.”

“Right, of course it does,” Arthur said, tightening his hands on the reins. “It makes him trustworthy like a mercenary, or a merchant.”

“He has some ideas about using witches to bring other people into dreams,” Eames said. “It’s nothing anyone else is doing. Well--we might’ve done it, the other night.”

Eames grinned wryly at that.

“With alchemy?” Arthur asked. “So does this involve gold somehow?”

“I’m impressed that you managed to restrain that skepticism while we were meeting with Yusuf,” Eames said. “Truly an astonishing feat of self control.”

“It’s alchemy. There’s no evidence that any of it works,” Arthur said.

“Says the witch,” Eames said. “But please do get all your feelings about alchemy out now, because you’ll have to refrain when we reconvene with Yusuf. Though I should note that there is evidence that what he does works, even if it’s not gold.”

“I know you didn’t believe in witches,” Arthur said. “But witches and alchemists are nothing alike.”

“Of course not,” Eames said, before adding mildly: “Let’s talk about this again after you’ve had a chance to work with Yusuf. He is good, for all his faults.”

It was not quite the conversation Arthur wanted to have, but it was a conversation without any undercurrents, which was a start.

They broke for the night early to allow more time for Yusuf to catch up (and his mule, which Arthur really needed to ask about, if they were to ride the rest of the patrol with a mule and a cart), and as a result the pair of them were together in the camp for longer than they ever were with nothing to do. Arthur brushed Rota and Eames disappeared with no clear destination, though Arthur suspected he was doubling back to the hollow with the red house.

The hollow with the red stone house was something Arthur would like an explanation for, though he suspected it wouldn’t come easy. It may just have been Eames’ childhood home--in all likelihood it _was_ just Eames’ childhood home--but there was some secret there as well, and the fact that Eames had secrets at all worried Arthur, who had laid most of his secrets bare.

Except for the fact that he’d been in Eames’ dreams; Arthur still had that, and although he hadn’t learned much from the dream itself, dreamwalking without welcome and without cause was the kind of thing that lead to undue fear, and undue fear lead to witchhunts, flames licking upwards, swallowing flesh.

Those thoughts hovered at the fringes of Arthur’s mind for most of the afternoon. There was only so much to be done about it; he ran through everything the tutors had ever had him memorize, but somehow he wound up back on the Witches’ Law, and that brought him back to Eames’ dream.

He could just tell Eames. It wasn’t like he had learned anything.

Eames and Chilk came clattering into the campsite near dusk, and Arthur had already started the fire and steeled himself up for this, for something. But Eames was riding harder than he typically did and he looked distressed, lips drawn, lines across his forehead and in the corners of his eyes.

“Problem?” Arthur asked, getting to his feet.

“Problem,” Eames replied, frowning. “Mine, not yours.”

“And you’re not going to tell me about it,” Arthur said. It was supposed to be a statement, but it came out tired and distinctly exasperated, colored by something that suggested Eames was more to Arthur than he was.

Eames gave him a measured look, then swung off of Chilk, feet hitting the ground with a thud.

“Not your business.”

“What if I made it my business?” Arthur asked. “What if it already is?”

Eames didn’t look at Arthur, just began to move about the camp, busying himself. Arthur stood and stared after him, at the lines of his shoulders when Eames dropped his cloak to the ground. He was leading Chilk, and after a moment he began to brush him.

“The red house we passed this morning,” Arthur started, and saw the muscles in Eames’ back tense. “You hid something there, and it’s not there any longer.”

“And you know this how?” Eames asked. He was still staring at Chilk’s flank, where Arthur knew there was a dapple of white hairs. He couldn’t see them now--it was blocked by Eames’ head, the bulk of his back.

“I know this,” Arthur said. “And you haven’t told me.”

That got Eames to turn around, and his eyes were dark and sparking.

“You witch,” he said. “You _witch_.”

He drew the word out, and it was weighted with so much genuine hatred and fear that Arthur physically recoiled.

“Once, Eames,” Arthur said.

“When?”

“L’Dere, the night before we went back,” Arthur said. “But this is about everything you aren’t telling me.”

“Because it’s none of your business,” Eames bit out. He turned around and Chilk just stood there, gazing placidly into the distance. Arthur looked at Chilk’s large, mild eyes instead of Eames’. “So is this what you people do when someone won’t tell you something?”

“You could’ve been a spy.”

“I wasn’t, was I?” Eames said. “I’m not. _My vows are to Cadere_. I told you that.”

“Yes,” Arthur said. “You told me that in the process of _not_ telling me where you’re from.”

“You knew where I was from,” Eames said.

“And you were lying about it.”

“I’m a liar, Arthur,” Eames said, jabbing a finger at Arthur’s chest. “That’s what I am.”

Arthur held his ground and Eames’ gaze. It was uncomfortable, the air around them charged. Chilk was still staring at an indeterminate point in the ground, though--Arthur could see his blurred outline in his peripheral vision, and he tried to focus on that for a moment: _Chilk_ didn’t think anything was wrong.

“I’m a witch, _Eames_ ,” Arthur hissed. “That’s what _I_ am. Am I supposed to ignore it? The dreams are always there. I just need to reach out and touch them. It’s that simple.”

He laughed, and it sounded bitter and strange to his own ears, sadness on all its edges.

“Reading them is never simple, though. All I saw in yours was that house,” Arthur continued. “All I know is that it’s significant in some way. I don’t know how.”

“I could tell you,” Eames said, dropping one hand and drumming his fingers together in the air. “But it would probably be a lie. And would you believe me, anyway? Or would you try to check?” 

“It’s not _checking_ ,” Arthur said, then he sighed and sat down. “All I got was the house. Do you not understand that? I see the dream, not what’s under the dream.”

“But you still saw it,” Eames said, and they were at an impasse, because Arthur couldn’t deny the brief, watery moments he had spent in Eames’ dream.

“I guessed,” Arthur said.

“Good guess,” Eames said flatly.

“Some would welcome me.”

“Some?” Eames echoed. “Go to them, then.”

Arthur ran a hand through his hair, then looked up at Eames and held his gaze.

“I don’t need to,” he said. “I’m a witch, remember?”

“I could sell you,” Eames said. “I could sell this. Morrow would be so pleased.”

“And I could kill you,” Arthur said pleasantly. “If it came to that. Though I would rather it not. But my sword is here--and I promise you, I’m quicker.”

At that Eames turned to look him, and Arthur ducked to prod the fire, to catch his thoughts and sort them out.

“And that’s without considering the fact that I’m the Crown Prince, since I know you don’t like talking about that.”

“We’re near the border,” Eames said, but he sat down beside Arthur, rested his arms on his knees and stared at the fire. Some of the tension seemed to be draining out of him, sinking from his body into the soil beneath his feet. Arthur turned towards him.

“Yes, and we both know that I turn into dust when I cross the border,” Arthur said, and Eames’ lips quirked into something resembling a smile--not a real one, but close enough to the idea of one.

“You said you could show me,” Eames said.

“I showed you already.”

“But it’s different away from the falls?” Eames asked, and Arthur shifted his gaze back to the horses.

“Somewhat.” 

Rota lifted her head, gazed off at an indeterminate point in the distance. It seemed easier, to be a horse.

“Say it plain, Arthur,” Eames said, and Arthur pulled his gaze inwards, to Eames.

“I have,” he replied quickly. “You’re the one who claims to be a liar.”

Arthur’s fingers were twining through the air with nothing to rest on. He took his dagger from his boot and twirled it; it calmed him, marginally.

“We’ll be in Daleth soon Arthur,” Eames said, and his voice was quieter than it had been. “Within a few days. I am loyal to Cadere, my mother was burned as a witch. There is nothing else you need to know about me.”

“And I’m a witch,” Arthur said. “And if that’s going to be a problem, you’d best leave right now.”

“Show me, Arthur,” Eames said.

And so they slept, with no one sitting watch.

“You have to look for me,” Arthur said, when he was curling up with his back to Eames’. “It may not be immediately clear.”

They made the bed on the ground, spreading the two horse blankets and the cloth they usually kept for the bivouac into something wide enough for two people. They slept with their backs together, and while Arthur would like to say it was strange to sleep with a warm weight at his back, but mostly it reminded him of home, of heavy, embroidered blankets and the nights Ariadne would crawl into bed with him and they’d sleep with dreams enmeshed. And if Eames was not his sibling, if Eames was as far from being his sibling as it seemed possible to be--that was a thought best pushed aside. Irrelevant, Arthur himself had said.

 

_When Arthur dreams it’s of Cadere, but he is not there, now; he is nowhere he knows. It must be the Morrow capital--water runs through it like veins. The dream is populated with strangers, quiet figures with stolid faces who won’t meet Arthur’s eyes._

_Eames is hiding. He may not even know he’s doing it, but he is, and so Arthur moves through the streets looking, trying to find the real mind amongst all these false ones. He can feel it, somewhere on the fringes, but whenever he looks he sees a stranger, until for a moment he sees._

_Everything around is muffled, dimmed, and Eames is there--only younger, thinner, softer around the eyes and dressed in simple clothes--a loose-fitting shirt, worn trousers--meant to fade into the background. This is Eames. This is not Eames._

_Arthur blinks his eyes shut, and pushes._

_It’s been some time since he’s done this, but he can feel the landscape of the dream shifting around him even with his eyes closed--maybe especially with his eyes closed. When he opens them, he’s in the castle, in the armory. Eames is not there, but there are footsteps behind him, and then he is._

_“You said you worked for a swordsmith. But you didn’t.” Arthur is not sure how he knows this, but he does, in the same way he knew there was something hidden in the red house and now it’s gone. “You went to the Vena and you were a thief.”_

_Eames has so many forms, shapes innumerable. He is hiding in plain sight._

_“Who are you?” Arthur asks. “What are you?”_

_“I’m a knight of the crown,” Eames says._

_When Arthur turns to look at him Eames is in full armor. Arthur brings his hand to his brow, and his circlet is there, and Eames is dropping to his knees, and--_

_It’s easier, almost, to close his eyes, to reach out his mind to Eames’, and see without seeing at all._

 

Arthur woke up.

They were still lying with their backs together, and Arthur could hear Eames’ breath slip from sleeping to waking. Neither of them pulled apart or rolled over to face the other--they just lay there, and the moments spent like that slipped together until Arthur was uncertain whether they were actually awake or just in another place of dreaming.

“That was not what I was expecting,” Eames said.

“It never is.”

Arthur rolled over so he was staring up at the sky, mapping constellations with his eyes.

“What did you steal?” he asked.

“Everything they loved,” Eames replied. He sounds cracked and hollowed out. “And nothing that they needed.”

He laughed.

“And now they took the thing I need.”

Arthur shifted upwards until he was sitting up.

“Go to sleep,” he said. “I’ll sit watch.”

He sat watch all night, and when Eames woke in the morning he turned to look at Arthur for a moment before going to his saddlebags and returning with four eggs that he must have either bought or stolen the day prior. He cooked in silence, then slid two onto a plate for Arthur and kept two for himself.

“I know you’re skeptical of alchemy,” Eames began. “But before I left Morrow I stole a painting for Yusuf, and in exchange he made me--something. A cloak. It makes me difficult to see. I left it when I came to Cadere.”

“Difficult to see?”

“If you look at it, your eyes slide off like water from waxcloth,” Eames said. “No one likes a thief, and I am known in the Vena. I’d rather not go back without it.”

“Known as a thief,” Arthur replied, drumming his fingers into a sudden realization. “But what if you weren’t?”

“If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be who I am,” Eames said. “That’s a question for a philosopher.”

“If I attend the Morrow ball it would be suspicious,” Arthur said. “If a foreign prince from the north attends, though, that would merely be eccentric, and no one will recognize him for a thief just because he resembles one.”

“Proclus?” Eames asked. “I couldn’t--”

“Not Proclus,” Arthur said. “One of the northern isles. We will say you were on a diplomatic mission to Proclus, and wished to join the festivities in good will--Saito will be able to tell us whom you might imitate passably. You are fair enough.”

It was true--Eames had the fair hair and broad brow that was common in the regions to the north, and after studying him Arthur wondered how he had failed to notice it before.

“And you?” Eames said.

“I’ll be your page, of course,” Arthur said, averting his eyes. It was an inappropriate thing to do, as a prince, but as a prince the _most_ appropriate thing to do was to defend his country, proprietry be damned.

“It could work,” Eames said, looking at his own hands, laid out in front of him, blunt fingers curled.

“There must be a tailor in Daleth who knows the northern styles,” Arthur continued, sketching this plan in his head.

“I can imitate the northern dialect,” Eames said, in a passable mimicry. Arthur raised his eyebrows in question and Eames shrugged.

“Settled, then,” Arthur said. “Shall we ride?”

They did. They met Yusuf in the late afternoon, and rode with him and his mule cart (his _mule cart_ ) until dusk, when the mule cart proved to be useful by virtue of containing significant quantities of food. Dinner was more than they’d had in weeks, accompanied by Yusuf’s ambling narrative about Eames, their past, life in Morrow. He asked Arthur if he knew any witches and Arthur just smiled and said, “Yes, quite well.” Eames caught his eye and grinned, and for a moment everything was easy and comfortable. If it passed--which it did--well, most things passed.

With three they could have split night watch fairly efficiently, except Yusuf refused to participate, and so it was back to the way it had been. Probably for the best; having been in Eames’ dreams twice, Arthur wasn’t sure he could have kept out if he tried. When they reached the capital they would be sleeping in different chambers, in different parts of the city, but with so few other minds around--

And Eames would have known, and the last time they dreamed together it had been too much, too strange.

So Eames and Arthur slept in shifts while Yusuf did not. It was two days’ ride to Daleth, but for two days nothing happened, and soon they were riding across the bridge over the L’Dere delta, Arthur and Eames abreast and Yusuf behind, and Arthur could see his flag creeping up the castle turret. They saw them, then. He lifted a hand and waved in the direction of the watch, hoping Ariadne was with them.

Eames went to the knights’ barracks with Yusuf and Arthur went to the palace. It felt strange to splinter apart like that, to different spaces to sleep. Arthur needed to go back to the palace and do everything he hadn’t while away, Eames needed to file his reports, and Yusuf didn’t need to do anything in particular, but he had to wait for Arthur and Eames before the rest could begin.

“Besides,” Yusuf said when they parted. “Places to go, people to see. I hear your city has a beautiful underbelly.”

“I’m sure it does,” Arthur had replied, because Yusuf made it sound like a compliment.

Arthur rode through the palace gates alone, but Ariadne was there to greet him, trailing after him as he brought Rota to the stables and maintaining a bright monologue about everything Arthur had missed--the litter of hounds Ariadne named, her latest (awful) tutor, and the spiral of other events, significant and insignificant, that comprised palace life.

“Ariadne,” Arthur interjected, ruffling her hair. “Good to see you again, little scoundrel.”

“Not that little,” Ariadne corrected. “Don’t condescend to me.”

And Arthur laughed, and ducked to pull her into a hug.

“Can we dream tonight?” she asked. “Mama and papa say I’m too old--”

“You’re not,” Arthur said quickly, although he should have told her that they were just trying to protect her, that being a witch wasn’t all brightness and light and dreams as vivid as life itself. “You’ll never be too old. It’s who we are.”

The next phase of his return was his restoration to proper princeliness, because upon return Arthur looked insufficiently royal. And so he let himself be bathed, his hair clipped, body wrapped in new, clean clothes that were too soft for days spent on horseback. It was a strange feeling, new and familiar at once. Once appropriately garbed, Arthur had dinner with his parents and they spoke softly about an uneventful border patrol, Ariadne’s schooling, minor disputes the king had recently mediated. They didn’t discuss potential betrothals, and Arthur didn’t ask.

Some would say he was too old already, but there was a calculated diplomacy at play, and none of the neighboring kingdoms had an heir that would suit, which meant branching further afield. Arthur had suspicions that they would be sending him south across the sea on the next trade mission, and he would be polite, bow and smile when he should, kiss knuckles and hands. He was doing the equivalent with his parents at their long dinner table, and it was not precisely painful but it did require maintaining a very thin veneer, always threatening to crack, and Arthur wasn’t sure how long it would hold.

When he went up to his chambers Ariadne was waiting, curled in one of his chairs with her feet kicked up on another, reading a tome Arthur recognized as _The Alchemy of Dreams_. It was an obscure one, and odd, and the only book with ‘alchemy’ in the title that Arthur had ever respected.

“Do Mother and Father know you’re reading that?” Arthur asked, and Ariadne failed to look the least bit contrite.

“Do Mama and Papa know you keep a copy under your mattress?” Ariadne said. “I’m better at hiding things than you are.”

“They aren’t going to look,” Arthur said, shoving Ariadne’s feet off the spare chair and sitting down. “You were scuffing my chair.”

Ariadne waved her hand imperiously and shifted her feet to the footstool.

“Princess,” Arthur muttered, and Ariadne grinned like that was positively delightful and said, “I _am_ , you know.”

Arthur nudged Ariadne’s feet to the side of the footstool and swung his own up, studying her face. She was precocious for thirteen, but she was still thirteen. She was also better at imposing her own will on dreams than Arthur had ever been, and better at building completely new landscapes, modeled on nothing Arthur had ever seen before. Arthur always wound up in the castle armory, his chambers, a certain stretch of road in the central plains. Ariadne, though.

She would _hate_ him if he did this without her.

“So,” Arthur said, gesturing to the book in Ariadne’s lap. “Tell me what you’ve learned.”

Somewhere in the midst of their conversation it occurred to Arthur that he was acting as Ariadne’s dreamwalking tutor, or perhaps she was his, and somewhere later they both fell asleep in their chairs. Their dreams mingled easily, Arthur as comfortable in Ariadne’s as in his own, and their dream together was simple and clear and bright, a whirl of Caderian landscapes that eventually devolved or evolved into Ariadne’s fancies. There were no strange revelations; they hardly even spoke, just floated and ambled. There were no secrets between them.

Except Eames. Until Eames.

 

_They are the wind, or the wind is them, winnowing through rice paddies and leaving tiny furls in the water in their wake. Before them Ariadne is building up something, weaving grains and grasses into an undulating structure. Their feet touch the ground at the arch that serves as an entrance, and they duck inside, and there is a figure in the foyer with his back turned to them and he turns around and--_

_“Eames,” Arthur breathes, without meaning to. Eames’ eyes are strange and canny, over bright, and Arthur can’t tell if he is part of the dream populace or if Eames himself has simply manifested here, under the mottled shade of Ariadne’s grain house._

_Ariadne is at Arthur’s side, looking between the pair of them, and she is the first to step forward, wary and wide-eyed like a young animal._

_“Who is he?” she says, then adds, a little louder: “Who are you?”_

_Eames is looking between them, and suddenly there is a sword at his hip, a long, curved, angry thing, not like the broadswords they have here but like the swords from south of the sea and Arthur is saying “No, no, no,” but Eames’ face is as blank as a sheet of parchment, and his eyes are hollow, and this is not Eames but--_

_The sword drives through Ariadne, and pierces the back of her dress, and when Eames pulls it out, still dripping with blood, Arthur steps forward and lets the same happen to him._

 

Ariadne was screaming in her chair. Arthur reached out to her and pulled her up and into his arms, held her close. She was so small. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” His dreams had never been dangerous before, and even if he knew in some distant, objective way that Eames was manifesting Arthur’s own fears that didn’t make it _better_ , didn’t solve any problems, didn’t wipe the image of Ariadne’s body slumping on the blade from Arthur’s memory.

“What happened, Arthur?” Ariadne asked. Her voice was soft, but it was not little; she was demanding an answer.

“I think the real question is what _is_ happening,” he said, and he could feel everything drain right out of him, so he was purely exhausted. He sat down on the footstool and pulled Ariadne down beside him, leaving an arm looped around her shoulders.

“When I was at L’Dere Falls,” he began. “Saito of Proclus came to me--”

And then he told her everything, words spilling out of him like stones from a jar, tumbling into one another. Ariadne was his sister, and she was young, but she was a strong thing and as long as Arthur was enmeshed in this she would be, too. Protecting her would not be protecting her.

When Arthur was done, Ariadne leaned her head on his shoulder and says, “I guess I’ll need to meet your knight then.”

“He’s not _mine_ ,” Arthur said, and he could feel himself blush. “And he stabbed you.”

“I know,” Ariadne replied. “You said his name, first.”

She went back to her own chambers to sleep and Arthur curled up in his bed, which was large and cold and soft and empty, and he managed, through some great feat of will, not to dream at all.

Ariadne didn’t flinch when she met Eames. Eames did, but not at Ariadne--it was Arthur, and the way Eames touched his fingers to his brow in a tacit acknowledgement. The circlet was there, on Arthur’s forehead. He inclined his head, felt the weight of it. 

“Is she even old enough to be here?” Eames asked, looking between the pair of them.

‘Here’ was a tavern near the palace, where Arthur knew the owner and the owner knew to keep her mouth shut, a place decorated in dark wood, with mugs suspended above the bar.

“I have a name, it’s Ariadne, and I’ve been here before,” Ariadne said. “Mistress Tansy _knows_ me.”

She waved to Tansy, as if to prove this point, and Eames shrugged and turned back to the bar. Tansy waved back and poured Ariadne a glass of ginger beer.

“Yusuf will be along in a few,” he said. “You can explain this then.”

Yusuf was along in slightly more than a few, and when he arrived he looked between Arthur and Ariadne, raised his eyebrows, and said “They’ve _multiplied_.”

“They do that,” Eames said idly.

“This is Ariadne,” Arthur said, and Ariadne tipped down in a curtsey. Yusuf bent to kiss her hand and said, “Princess,” which made Ariadne giggle, so that was alright.

Arthur got Tansy to let them into one of the rooms upstairs, a private one with a long wooden table.

“So where are the witches?” Yusuf asked as soon as they were seated, and Ariadne had to cover her face.

“Uh,” Arthur said dumbly. He hadn’t thought this through, and he can see Eames hadn’t either.

“We are,” Ariadne said, and dissolved into giggles. “We’re the witches.”

“We?” Yusuf asked, looking at Ariadne.

“Me and Arthur,” Ariadne said. “ _We’re_ the witches.”

“Arthur,” Yusuf echoed, and then looked between Arthur and Eames. “Is there something I’ve missed? Eames, I thought you weren’t interested in the fairer sex.”

Ariadne looked confused now, and Arthur sighed.

“Yusuf thinks witches are always women,” he provided. “Yusuf, that’s a myth.”

Yusuf grinned like there was a joke somewhere in there, and then he looked between Arthur and Ariadne like he wanted to pin them down, which Arthur supposed was part of wanting to--examine them.

“But you’re witches, both of you? Is it the whole family, then?”

“Yes,” Arthur said, shifting in his chair. “Don’t let that get out.”

“Look,” Yusuf said, and it was only then that Arthur saw the leather case Yusuf had brought with him, which he swung up on the table and unbuckled. The case was lined with wool and filled with neat rows of small amber phials. Yusuf selected one and held it up to the light of the room’s one square window, and Arthur could see a leech suspended in it.

“I’ve been working on these for a long time,” he said. “And it changes my dreams, but I need a witch to test them on.”

He passed the phial to Eames, and Ariadne and Arthur took it and inspected it by turn.

“What is in it?” Arthur asked. “Other than the obvious.”

“Proprietary information,” Yusuf said, looking smug.

“And how is it administered?” Arthur asked. “If I’m supposed to be--”

“What about me?” Ariadne interjected.

“He’s not testing it on you,” Arthur said. “He’s not testing it _at all_.”

“What?” Yusuf looked taken aback.

“It’s a leech in a phial of you won’t say what,” Arthur said. “Synthesized in a lab full of tin that’s never going to turn into gold.” 

“You’ve been to my lab,” Yusuf said. “It contains no such thing.”

Arthur set the phial down on the counter.

“Convince me,” he said. “Convince me that this won’t kill me. Preferably by demonstrating that I didn’t just prove everything you knew about witches wrong with my genitals.”

“I thought I told you to restrain your skepticism,” Eames said, just as Ariadne groaned “ _Arthur_.”

Yusuf was lifting the phials from his case, one by one, and then he removed the wool liner. Beneath it there was a manuscript, also bound in leather. Yusuf placed it on the table, where it shed thin sheets of parchment.

“Usually I make people pay for this privilege, but if you read it in this room it’s free,” Yusuf said. “Everything I know. It covers considerably more than genitals.”

“Charming,” Arthur said, but his hands were already on the manuscript, drawing it towards him. The cover was bare, but scrawled on the first page, under a series of scribbled out titles, were the words _The Alchemy of Dreams_. Arthur recognized the title, and when he went to the first page he recognized the introductory paragraphs as well.

“How’d you get this?” he asked.

“I wrote it,” Yusuf said, his grin smug. Arthur glanced at Eames for confirmation, but he just mouthed something Arthur couldn’t decipher before his lips settled into a smug grin.

“Is that?” Ariadne asked, slipping over to Arthur’s shoulder and peering down at the manuscript. “Arthur _loves_ this book. He keeps it in his bed.”

Eames coughed.

“His bed, you say?” Yusuf said, raising his eyebrows.

“Under the mattress,” Arthur said.

“Do you--” Yusuf made a lewd gesture. “As well?”

“ _Yusuf_ ,” Arthur said, glancing at Ariadne. “And no.”

“I know about things,” Ariadne muttered. “Geoffrey from the stables tells me.”

Arthur managed to resist the urge to make a disparaging remark about stablehands, though he couldn’t resist a clipped, “Stay away from Geoffrey.” Ariadne pouted.

“I think we’ve slightly lost the target here,” Yusuf said, fingering one of his phials and then lifting it to the light. “Leeches: yea or nay?”

“How thoroughly have these been tested?” Arthur asked.

“Sample size sixteen,” Yusuf said. “Including myself. Both sexes, range of ages. No known witches, but no known complications, either.” 

“Fine,” Arthur said. “Just me, not Ariadne. If anything goes wrong fetch Tansy; she’s a healer, and I trust her more on that than any of you. Where does the leech go?”

Eames and Yusuf glanced between themselves and Ariadne looked sullen for a moment.

“The leech goes on the back of the neck,” Yusuf said, taking the phial back and flipping it upside down. “Below the base of the skull. It needs to stay on throughout the dream.”

“Well,” Arthur said. “Now?”

“What, you’re going to sleep on the table?” Eames asked. He’d been quiet, sitting to the side with one leg rucked up in front of him and his arms looped around it.

“Tansy has rooms,” Arthur said.

“And we’re all going to watch you?” Eames persisted.

“I need to monitor him,” Yusuf said. “To make sure nothing goes wrong.”

And so it was that they all moved to another of Tansy’s upstairs rooms, and gathered chairs around the single thin bed, and Arthur laid with his head on his folded arms and let Yusuf press the cool, slick thing to the back of his neck, felt the press and prick.

“There’s sleeping serum there, too,” Yusuf said vaguely, but Arthur was already slipping under and away.

 

_He is a blank space--he is in a blank space--but as he extends himself others gradually materialize around him, one and then another, rising out of the space like plants from the soil. Arthur reaches out to the first one he approaches, the butcher from down the street, who’s probably napping on the job, only they don’t descend into his dream. They stay in the space, the clean, empty space, and the man looks at Arthur like he’s still asleep. Arthur moves on._

_Each person he approaches responds in kind, and Arthur doesn’t understand what’s happening. This is like no dream he’s ever had; it doesn’t feel like he’s touching any other sleepers; it is not right, not normal. And it continues like that, on and on through the empty space, past more people than he should be passing, and all of them asleep, even as they’re dreaming. He recognizes them, but he doesn’t know them, they aren’t real._

 

Arthur woke up after what felt like an age, and glanced between the three in the room. Ariadne and Yusuf were both wearing questions on their faces, eager and hopeful.

“No,” he said. “It was--strange.”

“Strange _how_?” Yusuf asked. “I need more than that.”

“Like everyone else was asleep,” Arthur said. “Like I was awake and everyone else I encountered in the dream was asleep. I couldn’t touch them. And the dream itself was empty.”

“Could you push it?” Ariadne asked.

“Didn’t try,” Arthur said, at the same time as Yusuf said, “ _Push_ it?”

“Shape it,” Arthur provided. “Change the landscape.”

“Well _try_ then,” Yusuf said, sounding exasperated. “You’re an awful research assistant. I’m going in with you.”

“Me too,” said Ariadne.

“Then I suppose I’m in as well,” Eames muttered, looking at the rest of them: Arthur, hitched up on his elbows in the bed; Yusuf and Ariadne with twinned expressions of eager anticipation.

“No,” Arthur said, shaking his head and turning to Yusuf. “What’s it normally like? Because I didn’t have a normal dream.”

“I said, they’re more vivid,” Yusuf replies, furrowing his brow.

“But are they lucid?” Arthur asked. “That’s the part that matters, I think--are you more aware than you normally are?”

“Aren’t witches always aware?” Yusuf asked.

“This is different,” Arthur said.

“I _have to see_ ,” Ariadne whined.

Arthur glanced between them, then shook his head.

“Fine,” he said. “Fine.”

And the leeches came out again, and they went under all at once.

 

_No one is awake, save the four of them, and Arthur stares at the others with his eyes open. This is not a normal dream; Yusuf has made something new._

_“This is not a normal dream,” Arthur says, but even as he speaks Ariadne begins to shape it. She raises a city from the void, forming it meticulously. Yusuf is turning in a circle to watch._

_“It’s like we’re in a dream that’s empty,” Ariadne says. Her voice sounds distant. “A dream no one’s dreaming. It’s hollow. We can shape it however we want.”_

_“But secrets?” Yusuf asks, and Arthur shrugs._

_“Probably none--” he starts._

_“We could give them a place to keep them!” Ariadne interjects. “A hiding place. It wouldn’t be like a true dream, but it might work--and we don’t need secrets, besides.”_

_“You think this could work better, if we’re to plant an idea?” Eames asks._

_Arthur looks over at Eames._

_“If we could make this feel like a real dream--we believe our dreams,” he says. “We trust them.”_

_“Even when they lie to us,” Eames finishes._

_“Everything lies,” Arthur says, staring at Eames--the shape of his eyes, his mouth. Around them a city rises and falls, and suddenly Ariadne is at Arthur’s elbow:_

_“Come,” she says. “Come see.”_

_So they go, and see._

 

When they woke, the room was the same, and Arthur had trouble seeing how that could be, even though he knew, objectively, that was the way it should be.

They needed a lie that King Maurice would believe; and, more than that, they needed to be able to carry it off. Ariadne could shape the dream well enough, but Eames and Yusuf couldn’t do anything at all. Well; not in dreams, not yet. Eames had the information they needed on Peter Browning and Yusuf had his leeches, and between the four them--well, it was a start. They had a start. Arthur would have asked for more, but he would have gone ahead with less.

The next week passed in a blur. Eames disappeared to Morrow, and Arthur sent messengers to Saito and Sir Miles requesting Mallorie’s notebooks. He and Ariadne spent far too much time sleeping, so Ariadne could build the dream landscape and Arthur could train her in self defense. She had always been preternaturally good with throwing knives, but Arthur wanted her to know the basics of hand-to-hand combat, and it was easier to practice in the dream than out of it: time passed slower, in dream, and she could feel pain but she couldn’t be hurt.

The notebooks, when they arrived, were stranger than he expected them to be. Arthur gave Ariadne the pages filled with sketches of dreams, but he kept to himself the wildly cryptic journals, filled with information that didn’t make sense, that would be impossible to know accurately. The person Arthur wanted to discuss it with was Eames, and he tried not to read too much into that.

When Eames returned it was at Tansy’s with a pint already in front of him, one hand curled around the glass. Arthur had expected to meet Yusuf to discuss dream theory, which they had taken to doing most afternoons, but Yusuf was as reliable as the weather, which was to say not very.

“You’re back,” Arthur said, sitting down besides Eames.

“Had to happen eventually,” Eames said, and turned to look at Arthur. “Nice of you to give me a royal welcome, Highness.”

“But of course,” Arthur said, then nodded at the glass. “I could buy you another.”

“And he’s generous!” Eames crowed. “But I believe Tansy already put this one on your tab.”

“And he’s taking advantage of my generosity,” Arthur said dryly. Eames grinned at him.

“What can I say?” he said, taking a long swig. “I have information for you, though.” 

“Upstairs, then?” Arthur asked, and they went upstairs, to the room with the long table and the square window. The late afternoon light was the rich amber color of Eames’ beer, and Arthur wondered if he needed a pint himself.

“What is it?” he asked instead.

“Peter Browning,” Eames started. “Maurice’s chief advisor.”

“We knew that,” Arthur said, drumming his fingers on the table. “What will make Maurice stop trusting him?”

“If Peter demonstrated himself to be a threat to Robert,” Eames said. “I’m kind of inclined to suggest Robert’s a witch, myself.”

“But Robert’s not,” Arthur said flatly. “And that could fall apart fast. We need a smaller seed. Mustard, roughly.”

“If Maurice dies before Robert’s seventeen, Browning will be the regent until Robert’s of age,” Eames said. “So we suggest Browning wants to extend that--cares more about the throne than the family on it. It’s true, incidentally, so we’d be doing him a favor.”

“Not that he deserves it,” Arthur muttered, and Eames looked up at him and grinned viciously, the tip of a canine catching on his lower lip in a way that made heat flare in Arthur’s chest. He looked away.

“Yes, but we’re going to go wander around his head to do it, which I’m sure he’d be grateful for.”

Arthur hummed and returned Eames’ grin, then paused.

“I’ve been going through Mallorie’s notebooks,” he began. “She says strange things about water.”

“Strange how?” Eames asked.

“She says they’re going to use the water,” Arthur said. “To weaken Cadere. Like Maurice has some sort of thrall over it, like he could just _take_ it.”

Eames looked thoughtful.

“Maybe he does,” he said, finally. “Maybe Cadere isn’t the only lineage with power.”

“Our water, though,” Arthur said. “That’s so far beyond--we’re prepared for a drought, but not a permanent one, nothing of that magnitude. We don’t have alternatives.”

“I believe that’s the point,” Eames said. “I haven’t heard anything about this, though. You should ask Yusuf.”

“I got the notebooks from Saito,” Arthur said. “And he also sent me the information we needed on the Northern Isles. So it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lord Elroy.”

“Elroy?” Eames asked.

“He rides with their knights, but he’s third in line for the throne, after the prince and princess,” Arthur said. “Though right now he’s dressed inappropriately for his status.”

“You’d like to dress me, then?” Eames asked.

“No,” Arthur said, giving Eames a dry, assessing glance. “But I know a tailor who would.” 

“I believe my page needs new clothes as well,” Eames said. “Shall we?”

“We shall,” Arthur said. “But we still need to solidify our plans.”

“You have everything I know,” Eames said. “These things require a certain amount of--imagination. Inspiration, if you will. We may need to wait for it.”

“We have one week,” Arthur said. “And then more than my patience will run out.”

Eames just laughed, and then they were going out the door and dipping down the steps, out into the street.

“Am I fit to be seen with the prince, despite being too poorly dressed for a Lord?” Eames asked.

“I’ve kept worse company,” Arthur said, giving Eames a sidelong glance.

“So I’ve heard,” Eames said. “Cobol, was it?”

“You’ve been asking about me,” Arthur stated, and Eames shrugged.

“Figured I should,” he said, and settled into something that might be anticipation as easily as he matched Arthur’s stride.

“Vernon Cobol,” Arthur said. “It was fun while it lasted, but I lack certain-- _parts_ \--necessary for the production of heirs, and his family wanted one.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t he who was lacking?” Eames asked, and Arthur lifted his shoulders.

“His parents were the ones who pushed him to find a proper consort, so,” he said. “Not that--mine would prefer it, as well, but it never came to that. And frankly, he was mostly--” Arthur waved his hand and hoped that clarified it. 

“A good lay?” Eames said, raising an eyebrow and giving Arthur a look that sent a vague frisson down his spine. Arthur cracked his knuckles.

“One could say that, yes,” Arthur said. “We’re here.”

‘Here’ was a narrow door in a narrow building, and Arthur opened the door and ushered Eames inside. The tailor, a trim man who went by Hamish, was one Arthur had worked with before; he lifted a hand in greeting before shifting the bulk of his attention to Eames.

“You’re to be a noble, then?” he said, then turned to Arthur. “Peculiar taste, prince, if you’ll excuse my saying.”

Eames’ eyebrows were inching towards his hairline.

“Which is why we need you, because your taste is exquisite,” Arthur said.

“Yes, of course,” Hamish replied, preening slightly. “I was _quite pleased_ to hear from you--”

“Can we get on with it, then?” Eames interjected, and Hamish turned back to him, frowning.

“Measurements,” he said. “We’ll need your measurements. And--ah--colors, of course. Green, perhaps?”

“Nothing too bright,” Arthur provided. “We won’t be needing extra attention.”

“Keeping him to yourself,” Hamish said, nodding. “The northern styles are loose right now, which--”

Arthur let the babble overtake him, ignoring Eames’ pointed glances. He may have told Hamish that Eames needed new clothing for another reason. It was simpler that way. Hamish eventually gave Eames his full attention, and Arthur settled on a stool in the corner and watched the process. The whole thing seemed to put Eames off kilter, which afforded Arthur the opportunity to watch him.

Eames was, Arthur would allow, quite--something. And a further truth: something about the easy confidence with which he carried himself, the way his hips rolled when he walked, the set of his shoulders--well. Granted a moment to drink Eames in, Arthur had to admit that he had already noticed everything he had been trying not to.

He suspected Eames would be a good lay, and that entire conversation about Vernon--Arthur knew Eames was prodding, feeling him out. They _could_. The problem was what would happen after.

Only then Hamish was fading into the back room, and Eames was watching Arthur. Arthur was already looking up at him, and it was easy to hold his gaze there, to wait.

“What exactly did you tell our friend?” Eames asked, coming over to sit beside Arthur, though the stool could scarcely hold both of them.

“Just that I had a friend I needed to look like nobility,” Arthur said. “But I let him read into that.”

“And if I were nobility?” Eames asked.

“You wouldn’t be who you are,” Arthur said. “And that’s a question for the philosophers, isn’t it?”

They never talked about anything straight, Arthur realized. It was strangely comforting; knowing that, knowing that it was the pair of them who did this and not just Arthur alone. Eames’ fingers fluttered to Arthur’s thigh, stayed there, and Arthur let them.

When Hamish returned Arthur stepped forward and said, “I’ll need to be dressed as a page, as well.”

“Quite unusual, isn’t it, highness?” Hamish asked after a moment.

“I trust your discretion,” Arthur said flatly, and Hamish’s lips puckered into a grin.

“But of course,” he said. “I’ll just check your measurements, then.”

While he took his turn being poked and prodded, Arthur kept one eye on Eames, who looked--thoughtful. Not especially interested, no dark eyes, no flush to his cheeks, just like someone trying to unlock a particularly difficult puzzle. And while Arthur would have liked to say that he was no one’s puzzle, for a moment--for that moment--he was willing to be.

Hamish finished taking Arthur’s measurements and sent them back outside with instructions to return in two days. Eames and Arthur separated on the cobblestone outside without discussion, and Arthur let himself sink into his own thoughts on the walk back to the palace. Eames. He could--

But it was shit, really, to be some royal’s bedwarmer until he found an appropriate consort. Even though Arthur hadn’t particularly cared for Vernon, he had still found a peculiar shame in the certainty that it would never go any further than their quick tumbles in sheets, hay, dimly lit alleyways, that it would be something gossiped about and never announced. He would not--it wouldn’t be fair to Eames. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone, because Arthur would always be the prince; he could never be easy in the way others were; he was, himself, not the sort of person one wanted to keep on the side: too sharp eyed, too serious.

A faint part of Arthur recalled when they had first met, when Eames had told Arthur he rode well like it was a surprise. Arthur had wanted to tell Eames that his lips were too pretty by half to twist so sardonically, but Arthur wasn’t the sort of man who said that, and they hadn’t met under circumstances that would permit him to. And if they had met under different circumstances, not a prince, not a knight who had been a thief, they would not be the men they were.

Maybe, Arthur thought, they could set a sort of--statute of limitations. Sleep together once, twice, let the heat that sometimes curled below Arthur’s belly release itself. What Yusuf had said about Eames implied he was the sort who might not mind terribly much, if they were clear from the start. If Arthur--if Arthur wasn’t misusing his power. Not that Arthur thought Eames would be pressured by Arthur’s crown, but the circlet on his head would never _not_ be heavy to Arthur, and his own awareness of that would make it impossible to pretend, even for a moment, that he wasn’t the prince.

And by the time Arthur’s thoughts reached that juncture he was at the palace, and was reminded again.

Arthur met Eames at Tansy’s again the next day, and Eames had managed to draw Yusuf away from the city’s underbelly for long enough to join them.

“Water,” Yusuf said. “That’s _interesting_.”

“But is it possible?” Arthur asked, and Yusuf shrugged.

“When we get to Morrow,” Yusuf said. “The alchemist who taught me is especially interested in magnets--metals that attract or repel one another. It’s not my area, really--”

“And you’re such an expert in your area,” Arthur muttered, at which Eames elbowed him and whispered, “Shut up about your cock, _sire_ ,” which was enough to make a blush flare across the back of Arthur’s neck.

Yusuf looked between them, raised his eyebrows, and continued, “Point being, he may have an inkling. I’m inclined to say that this sounds like alchemy more than anything else, but really, everything’s alchemy, so.”

“Everything’s alchemy,” Arthur echoed.

Yusuf shrugged. “If Morrow had been able to do this before don’t you think they would’ve tried? And yet they haven’t, and you’ve seen no mention of it until now. How did your cousin find out?”

“She doesn’t say,” Arthur said. “But she and Dominic lived near the border, and sometimes information travels in strange ways.”

“It certainly does,” Yusuf said, like he was holding something back, like he had intended to say something different.

They got the clothes from Hamish two days later, and Ariadne sketched out dreams, and Yusuf made more alchemically altered leeches, and they still didn’t have a plan, and they were riding out to the Morrow ball. Or perhaps not precisely riding, because there was a carriage involved, one for Lord Elroy and his page and Yusuf’s mule cart behind, for Yusuf and Ariadne and the things that wouldn’t do to be found in a nobleman’s carriage but made perfect sense for an alchemist’s cart. Arthur had persuaded his parents that he and Ariadne ought to visit the border villages, and they had looked at him strangely, but they had agreed.

“What can one expect one’s page to do, then?” Eames said when they were in the carriage, swinging his feet up on the bench besides Arthur. “Clean my boots, perhaps?”

Arthur waved a hand.

“I’ll follow you around,” he said. “Stay in your chambers, clean things--even your boots, I suppose. Make sure all your business is sorted. And you’re to gripe to your fellows about me, about how I’m terrifically lazy and do very poor work.”

“Are you?” Eames asked.

“A page is only as good as his master,” Arthur demurred, letting his eyes drop in false deference. Eames laughed.

“You’re going to be awful at this, aren’t you?” Eames said. “Revenge for my impertinence.”

“A noble would keep his feet on the floor,” Arthur said. Eames looked at him, and left his feet where they were.

“I _suspect_ ,” he said. “That a page wouldn’t order his employer about.”

“Merely a suggestion,” Arthur said, kicking his own feet up onto the bench besides Eames.

They broke for the evening at an inn in Morrow, a dark, dank place with a bar downstairs and rooms above. They kept to themselves and took meals in their rooms, and did not speak to Yusuf and Ariadne--Arthur waved his fingers at Ariadne and she grinned back, but that was all the familiarity he could spare. Instead he went to the room he was sharing with Eames and curled himself up on the cot in the corner, facing the wall. Eames came in a few moments later, and Arthur rolled over on his back so he was staring at the ceiling.

“I’ll try not to,” he said. “Tonight. But you must realize this room is a bit on the small side. I would go bunk with Ariadne, but--”

He heard Eames padding over before the other man sat at the foot of his cot, and Arthur took a moment to study the soft lines of his profile in the dim light before Eames turned to look at him.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I think I can handle it.”

“Dreaming with others is always volatile,” Arthur said.

What Arthur didn’t say is that dreaming with Eames was especially volatile, and Arthur didn’t have enough experience to say why that was, if it was just that he hadn’t dreamed with many who weren’t witches before or if it was something about Eames, who was a knight and a liar and made even less sense in dreams than he did in real life, and also, perhaps, because Eames was someone Arthur wanted, someone whose dreams Arthur wanted to worm his way into and see clearly and completely.

“I understand,” Eames said.

“Are you willing to, though?” Arthur asked. And then, softer, because he’d never asked anyone before: “Am I welcome?”

Eames’ gaze on Arthur’s face felt heavy and strange.

“Sure,” he said.

Arthur touched a hand to his brow, nodding in acknowledgement, and Eames rose and went to his own bed.

 

_Arthur follows Eames, and Eames takes them to the sea, pooling blue and green on fine-grained yellow sand. It catches in whorls and eddies, wends around their feet._

_“This is nice,” Arthur says._

_Eames laughs. He’s bare to the waist--Arthur is, too, he realizes, and they’re both wearing trousers of fine linen, rolled up to their knees. The style is not one Arthur recognizes, and must come from the west, or the south. Stranger still, the skin on Eames’ back is marked only by freckles, no chimera._

_A fish floats up to them._

_It’s dead._

_Eames picks it up by its tail, and when he holds it up to the sky the fish is translucent, light shafting right through it--Arthur can see the delicate boning of its tail and fins, can see the soft organs in its rib cage. A bird has pecked out its eyes. The scales catch the light and reflect small shards of it back at Eames, dappling his skin._

_“Where are we?” Arthur says, and Eames turns to him and smiles, though the expression sits strange on his face._

_“At the seashore,” he says. He’s still holding the fish. He drops it with a splash, then reaches a hand back to Arthur._

_“Let’s go for a swim,” he says._

_Arthur takes his hand and follows him into the water. They walk in and water rises past their knees, pools around their waists, their shoulders, and then they’re under but still standing, and they’re swimming, and fish are swimming in a flock around them, bright and silver and alive, but none of them have eyes, and Arthur wonders what it is they aren’t seeing. His feet flutter behind him, as if of their own volition. They swim deeper, and the fish follow. A city rises up from the ocean floor, a pure blue thing unlike any city Arthur has seen._

_“Where is the king?” Arthur asks._

_Eames swirls around to look at him._

_“The king?” he asks. “What cause have you to meet with him?”_

_“The king--” Arthur starts. “The king--”_

_“There is no love lost between this king and his subjects,” Eames says. “He is a small man.”_

_Arthur looks at him._

_“He is a fish,” Eames says. “His flesh is a fish’s flesh, and through it you can see his bones.”_

_Eames is floating closer, and his eyes are large and liquid and thickly lashed, and Arthur is not sure if he is underwater or in them, in Eames’ eyes, but the words Eames is saying are important, but Eames’ face is so close, closer than it should be, and before Arthur can open his mouth to speak, or to wet his suddenly dry lips (and aren’t they already wet, from being underwater? shouldn’t they be?)--_

 

Arthur woke in a haze, entangled in his own bed linens.

“Eames,” Arthur said softly, rolling over on his stomach and propping his head up so he could look across the room. The light slanting in the window told him that they were just on the crest of morning.

“Eames,” he repeated, still vague and bleary. “The king--”

“What is it?” Eames asked. His voice was equally quiet, and distantly hoarse. For a fleeting moment Arthur wondered if this was what Eames would sound like, after, if Eames, too, had thought they were on the brink--

“Maurice,” Arthur said. “What if he’s not behind the thing with the water? What if Browning is an alchemist?”

“So?”

“We eliminate Browning, we eliminate everything,” Arthur muttered. “We convince Maurice--Browning is using the witchhunts to turn Maurice’s subjects against him, or Browning will use his alchemy to hurt Maurice when he has what he wants, or Browning--”

“Would that stop the witch hunts?”

“I don’t--” Arthur said.

“It’s a thought,” Eames said, when it became apparent Arthur was ill equipped to finish his thought.

They departed from the inn soon after, though Arthur still felt hazy and unsteady, carrying the memory of the dream with him. The worst part was that he and Eames would almost certainly be sharing chambers again, and again, and Arthur wasn’t sure how many more dreams they could share before they crossed some nebulous milestone from which they could not return, did something in sleep that could not be ignored in the clean light of day.

They arrived in the Morrow capital that evening, and Arthur peered out of the carriage and broad, busy streets paralleling delicate canals, water running through the city, catching and reflecting the light like fine filigree. 

“It’s very lovely,” Arthur said.

“Even ugly things can be,” Eames replied. “Morrow is wealthier than your country, and uses its wealth differently. You should see the baths.”

“I know,” Arthur said, turning back to the window. “Don’t I know.”

“Are you ready, then?” Arthur asked. “Lord Elroy, sir?”

“And you, page?” Eames replied. Arthur removed himself from the carriage and held the door, bowing his head as Eames stepped out. When Eames moved forward, Arthur trailed after. It felt strange, yet there was an ease to it, and there was something about the nobility Eames pulled over himself like a mantle, shoulders drawn back and a stride long and easy, that made Arthur _want_ to follow him.

It was certainly inappropriate for Arthur to be behaving thus, and he ducked his head when they passed other carriages on the street, hoping not to be recognized. But this entire charade was predicated on the idea that no one would look, and, with Arthur dressed as he was, it was quite likely that no one would. He was, after all, a page, and as a page he watched through his lashes as Eames was introduced to people Arthur had heard of but never met, nobles from Morrow and from further west still. The nobles were gathering in the finer inns, preparing for the first ball in two days’ time, and Arthur pulled to the side with the other pages. It was only in the evening when he was able to slip out and meet with Ariadne and Yusuf, staying at one of the quieter inns.

“I would’ve liked to go to the ball,” Ariadne said, peering out the window at the side street while Arthur and Yusuf sipped their ale. “I’ve a new dress. It’s blue. But I’d rather do this.”

“Of course you would,” Arthur said. “Is Yusuf treating you well?”

“He let me drive the cart,” Ariadne said, and Arthur looked at Yusuf. Yusuf just grinned benignly.

“She’s a good driver. And Farley’s a good mule.”

“Of course he is,” Arthur said flatly.

“One might think you didn’t like mules,” Yusuf said.

“He doesn’t,” Ariadne supplied. “One bit him, once--”

“Well, are the pair of you ready?” Arthur interjected. “Eames is scouting out an appropriate time and venue to isolate Maurice.”

“We are,” Ariadne proclaimed. “Yusuf even let me make a leech.”

It was only then that Arthur considered that handing his sister over to an alchemist may have been a poor idea, which showed a significant lack of forethought on his part.

“And Yusuf, you can meet with your mentor?” Arthur asked, and Yusuf nodded once, quickly.

Arthur returned to find Eames already in his chambers, sitting on his bed with his hands on his knees. He twisted to look at Arthur when he came in.

“I’ve heard pages are to help their masters dress and undress,” Eames said.

“I know you can dress yourself,” Arthur replied. “Undress, as well.”

“And the nobility can’t?” Eames asked. “I don’t believe that’s the purpose.”

“I’m not undressing you,” Arthur said flatly, and Eames grinned.

“You’re no one’s page in private, I know,” he replied. “I was just making an observation, based on my recent experiences as a lord.”

“If you’d like a proper page we could hire one,” Arthur said. “And he will buff your boots and button your shirts.”

“I’d rather he didn’t,” Eames said.

Arthur tried not to sleep that night, nobly clung to his wakefulness late into the evening while the dim light of street lamps flickered across the ceiling, casting strange, wavering shadows across the walls.

 

_Arthur is sitting by a canal, his feet bare and in the water. Slender boats move past, gliding effortlessly, light as clouds. Eames is not there. It should be a relief, but his absence makes Arthur feel hollow, like the dream is something less than it might have been._

_He waits, anyhow. The water is nice on his feet, the boats are nice to watch. The boats are singing, besides, a thin, straining tune that whistles around and through. It catches in Arthur’s own hollows, tugs through him._

_It is only after several moments waiting that he follows it, rises to his feet and walks towards the source. The whistling transcends itself, transforms into the sound of waves, and the waters are rising up, a burgeoning tide._

_Eames is here, or somewhere, Arthur suspects._

_He says his name, almost without meaning to, once and then again. His own voice is false to his ears._

_Eames is not there, and then he is, standing by the water, wearing a jacket of fine brocade in a rich, ripe color. Arthur recognizes it dimly as one of the jackets they purchased from Hamish, trim at Eames’ waist, straight and even across his shoulders._

_“Eames,” Arthur says, and Eames turns. His boots and trousers are the ones he wore on the trail, and they don’t match the jacket; scuffed and worn as they are, and made in another style. Arthur wants to tell Eames so, but if he did, Arthur knows without a doubt, he would have to dress him, show him how to dress properly._

_Eames is watching Arthur, expectant. Only then does it occur to Arthur that he himself is dressed improperly._

_He laughs. It makes him laugh._

_“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Arthur says. “Does it?”_

 

Arthur woke before the idea could reach fruition, or even fully make sense to him, and then he rolled back over and pretended to be asleep.

He and Eames spent the day reviewing the relevant members of the nobility, people who could be expected to know Maurice’s schedule, people who could be expected to know _everything_ , and then they sat down with Eames’ formalwear laid out before them.

“I think I do need your help,” Eames said. “There are a lot of buttons.”

“You can do up buttons,” Arthur said flatly, and Eames had, but when he emerged in the new clothes everything was askew.

“You’re--” Arthur said, waving a hand. Eames quirked a brow, and Arthur rose and began to straighten Eames’ jacket and waistcoat for him.

“You’re crooked,” Arthur continued, running his hands down Eames’ chest to smooth the wrinkles out of the fabric.

“I’m certainly not straight,” Eames said. Eames’ breath was gentle and hot on Arthur’s face, and Arthur dropped his eyes, but he could still feel warmth of Eames’ body radiating through the layers of fabric. Eames reached up and caught Arthur’s wrist, looped his blunt fingers around it and casually moved it aside. The feel of chapped fingers on Arthur’s skin made heat well up somewhere low in his chest, and it was such a little thing but it was still far, far too much.

“First ball,” Arthur said, pulling his wrist free and straightening Eames’ lapel. “Find a way for us to do this thing, will you?”

“You’ll be there, too,” Eames replied. “Pay attention yourself. Of course I’ll do my part.”

And then Eames leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the corner of Arthur’s mouth with an unexpected, almost unprecedented, gentleness. It caught Arthur off guard. His eyes flew open and he pulled back to stare at Eames, who was watching him placidly.

“Thank you,” Eames said, and Arthur didn’t have a chance to ask what he was being thanked for before Eames exitted the room.

Arthur found Eames just outside the door, leaning against the wall.

“Well,” Eames said. “Shall we go then?”

It was not what Arthur had expected. Eames was already walking down the hall.

“I’m not what you want,” Arthur said, but it came out as something small and meek, fluttering in the wake of Eames’ footsteps. ‘I never am,’ he thought but didn’t add.

They didn’t speak in carriage on the way to the palace, and Arthur felt stiff and uncomfortable in his seat. At the palace, bustle overtook his discomfort. There was a dense scrum of people at the gate, waiting to enter, and once they were inside the rooms were decorated with thick tapestries in the Morrow colors of blue and silver, embroidered in repeat with the Morrow crest. There were fountains in the corners, and curtains, behind which pages and servants flitted about, waiting to be summoned. When the others spoke with him Arthur affected a heavy accent, though not a particularly good one, and remained taciturn. He caught scraps of gossip, listened and catalogued them, but no one spoke of water or alchemy or witches, so mostly he watched Eames.

Eames, whose clothes still seemed to draw more attention than he was due. Eames, who was caught in a whirl of polite greetings, introductions, false smiles and cursory flirtations. Eames, who was good at this. Arthur had not expected him to be this good at this; Arthur should’ve known better.

Eames slid closer to Maurice and his son, Robert, who looked to be about Ariadne’s age. He wasn’t the whirl of energy Ariadne was, but something about his subdued presence seemed--sweet, almost. Naive, maybe. Arthur didn’t hate him, at the very least. Robert was tailing a server, pulling bits of food from a tray, and Maurice’s eyes were trailing after him, convincingly fond.

Eames spoke to Maurice only briefly, smiling broadly, then slipped away and back into the tangle of attendees, at which point the dancing begun.

Eames had said he knew how to dance, and Arthur had looked at him askance but had not pressed the issue. Perhaps Arthur should have; perhaps they should have practiced. It didn’t matter now, however, because Eames was turning on his heel and offering some skirted lady his hand.

Eames could dance, and well. Arthur didn’t know where he learned, but watching Eames dance added another layer to the charade, to the ease with which he wore this persona.

Eames became, in due course, a sought after dance partner, and Arthur--well, part of him was caught up in realizing that Eames was not the sort of person one might expect to wait around, while one measured a decision by metes and bounds.

But then he heard someone say ‘Cadere,’ and tore his eyes from Eames and sidled closer to the relevant conversation.

The man speaking was young, but he had the lazy ease that Arthur had only ever seen in old noble families. He was obviously from Morrow, as was the man he was speaking to, an older man with sharp eyes set in deep sockets.

“Were you expecting to see the Cadere family?” the older man was saying, looking intently at the dance floor and not at his conversation partner.

“Of course not,” the younger scoffed. “Merely observing that it would do them well to come.”

“It does no one well to come to a place where they are not welcome,” said the elder. “The Cadere family knows that, and it would be good for you to learn.”

“Yet we depend on their wheat.”

“And they depend on us not to harm them. It is a charming arrangement, isn’t it?”

The older man’s voice was silky, but when he finished he turned his gaze staunchly towards the dance floor, and the other fell silent. Only for a moment, though--then he said, “Pleasure to see you again, Lord Browning,” and slipped away.

So that was Peter Browning, then.

Arthur moved away again, but at the very least he had found someone to watch who wasn’t Eames. Browning stuck to the fringes of the room, but he never wanted for conversation partners, and eventually he and a pale haired, beak nosed man moved into a dimly lit room that appeared to be a library or study, somewhere with wall sconces that had not been decorated for the ball, a place where men gathered to smoke pipes and prove points.

Arthur couldn’t follow them there, but Eames could, perhaps. He was convincing enough, though it would be peculiar for the lord from the Northern Isles to take a concern in local politics.

When Arthur turned his attention back to the dancefloor, he couldn’t locate Eames. He tried, for a time, and then a girl with a tray of drinks came up beside him and offered him a kind smile and glass of lemon liquor. When Arthur refused she just smiled wider.

“Oh, we need it more than they do, don’t we?” she said, and didn’t leave until he took two. They burned sweet and bitter on the way down, and Arthur caught her by the elbow and took a third. 

“So the boy from the north does know how to enjoy himself,” she said softly. “We were beginning to wonder about your strange ways. And you did seem unusually devoted to your master.”

Arthur coughed.

“He is a good man,” he said, after the moment of uncertainty hung in the air.

“Better than mine, then,” she replied brightly, before disappearing into the crowd, leaving only a “Ta” behind.

“A good man, am I?” came a voice and a gust of warm breath directly into Arthur’s ear.

Arthur startled. 

“Unusually devoted, are you?” Eames asked when Arthur turned to look at him. He looked a bit unsteady on his feet, as if he had also partaken of the lemon liquor, and, in all likelihood, the wine that was served during dinner as well.

“You’re not supposed to be drunk,” Arthur hissed.

“And yet here I am, prince,” Eames said. “I merely followed the custom.”

“Don’t call me that,” Arthur said sharply, grabbing Eames’ hand. “We’re leaving.”

“I hold my liquor well,” Eames said quickly.

Liquor dampened dreams, which was one thing to be grateful for, Arthur thought, and he caught another glass as they left and threw it back quickly. Eames laughed at him.

They made it back to the inn intact, which was something of a surprise.

“We can talk in the morning,” Eames said when Arthur tried to bring up Peter Browning. “I’m in no state--”

And that was more or less the point at which he fell asleep.

When Arthur woke in the morning, there was a warm body pressed against his back, an arm about his waist, a hand on a low, soft place on Arthur’s stomach. For a second he thought is a dream, and a rather pleasant one at that, and then the hand was scratching Arthur’s stomach.

Arthur jabbed an elbow back into the body behind him, one quick, smooth motion, and Eames made a keening noise, pulled away, and fell to the floor.

Arthur looked down at him.

“What are you _doing_?” Arthur said, as quickly as he could. 

“It’s strange,” Eames said, sitting up without rising from the floor. “How quickly a thing starts to feel normal.”

“I suppose so,” Arthur said. “You were in my bed.”

“Seemed like the place to be,” Eames said.

“In my bed? It’s smaller and coarser than yours.”

Eames peered up at Arthur.

“You do know alcohol dampens dreams,” Arthur said after a moment.

“My bed was too large,” Eames replied. He was still dressed in the clothes from the night prior--only his boots had been shed, and he seemed to have settled himself comfortably on the floor.

“I saw Peter Browning,” Arthur said. “He was quite--”

“Peter Browning is our villain,” Eames said. “We knew that. And while I did not meet him, I believe I may have found a venue that will allow us to meet with Maurice privately--the king, apparently attends the baths in private in the afternoon. Tell Yusuf, and ask him to work out who we can bribe for access.”

“He goes without a guard?”

“His guard stays in another room, because Maurice values his privacy so.”

“Of course,” Arthur said, and rose from his bed. “I’ll go to Yusuf and Ariadne.”

“No need to leave immediately,” Eames said.

“I think I will,” Arthur said, and then he went to the door and tugged on his boots. “I need to check on Ariadne.”

“Of course you do,” Eames replied, but Arthur had already departed.

“How was it?” Ariadne asked brightly when Arthur arrived. “I wanted to sneak in, but Yusuf said no.”

Yusuf grinned broadly.

“Thank you,” Arthur said to him. “The ball was--rather busy. Peter Browning is awful. And, Yusuf, Eames would like you to find someone to bribe at the baths.”

“The baths, is it?”

“Yes,” Arthur said.

“We’re going to visit Maurice in the baths,” Ariadne said, and then dissolved into giggles. “He’s quite old, isn’t he? Older than you. Old as father.”

“I’ll cover your eyes,” Arthur said.

“Thank you,” Ariadne replied primly, and Yusuf laughed.

“Cover mine as well, then,” he said. “I’ve no interest in seeing that.”

“Perhaps we’ll get to him before he disrobes,” Arthur said, which sent Ariadne into another fit of giggles and Yusuf into--something similar.

“I feel like we should take this more seriously,” Arthur groused. “Yusuf, your mentor?”

Yusuf straightened himself up and studied Arthur.

“He thinks it’s possible,” Yusuf said, then shook his head and corrected himself. “He knows it’s possible, though he’s not sure what would make it possible on the scale of an entire kingdom--that’s rather a lot of water.”

“How is it done?” Arthur asked. “What would they need?”

“They charge the water itself, use other water--which of course Morrow has plenty of. But it’s the process itself that would be difficult to accomplish on a large scale, because it needs to be happen continuously, otherwise the water loses its pull and everything goes back to the way it was.”

“And so?”

“And so it absolutely does not make sense that Morrow would be attempting this,” Yusuf said. “Your cousin--there’s no way she’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur said softly, looking at Ariadne. “I would like to think she might be, but--”

Yusuf nodded.

“I’ll keep looking,” he said.

Arthur didn’t say that they were short on time and long on questions, because everyone knew that. Instead he went back to the room he shared with Eames, bearing greetings from the others.

“Returned, have you?” Eames said. He was seated on his bed, now, and there was a meal spread across the table in the corner. Breakfast, it looked like.

“Yusuf and Ariadne say hello,” Arthur said, seating himself at the table. “Are we going to eat?”

Eames came over to eat with him, and breakfast passed largely in silence.

“So we have an opportunity,” Arthur said. “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Eames confirmed.

“And we’re just going to--what? Enter his dream? Mal--”

“Mal was alone,” Eames replied.

“We don’t have a plan,” Arthur said.

“We’ll figure one out,” Eames said, and then he rose from the table and slid a hand across Arthur’s back, pausing to squeeze his shoulder. “You aren’t actually the only one involved in this, you know. You don’t need to take care of everything.”

Arthur knew that this was two conversations, but he didn’t know what to say in either one. He remained silent, because the whole thing felt like too much effort--holding his body still, his expression even, waiting for Eames.

“You don’t get to,” Eames said, not taking his hand from Arthur’s shoulder. “You’re not the only one who decides.” 

Eames gave Arthur’s shoulder a squeeze, a gentle thing that turned hard near the end.

“Eames,” Arthur said, because he didn’t know what else _to_ say, and then it was Eames’ hand on Arthur’s shoulder, lips against his ear, and only one conversation was happening because Eames said: “Come now, prince. We both want to. You’ve done casual before, and I promise I’m a better lay.”

It was as poor a proposition as Arthur had ever heard, but most didn’t bother propositioning the prince, so maybe that was a moot point. Something in the shading of Eames’ voice, though, and the closeness of his mouth--the brush of lips against Arthur’s ear, and the hot furl of Eames’ breath across his face, sent a fierce flare of heat up Arthur’s spine, and even if the line was awful, Arthur turned his head to the side, hooked one arm around Eames’ neck, and reeled him in.

The angle was all wrong, and their teeth were clacking together, which made Arthur grumble a little in the back of his throat because if they were going to do this thing they were going to do it right, or at least well, and that’s why Arthur got to his feet and tangled one hand in Eames shirt, pushing him back towards the large bed in the center of the room.

“You are--” Arthur started to say, but stopped when he realized he didn’t know where that thought was going,

“Yes?” Eames said, lips twisting into something that looked smug and made Arthur kiss him again just to shut him up, cupping one hand against Eames’ cheek and running a thumb over his coarse stubble.

But kissing was not--kissing was not. Arthur tugged at Eames’ shirt again, fiddled with the buttons until the collar was loosened enough to be tugged down over Eames’ shoulder, and Arthur could shift his mouth and suck hard. Arthur liked Eames’ shoulders, he remembered, almost as much as he liked Eames’ mouth, but they really needed to get to the sex part, because it was absolutely vital that this be about nothing more than sex, and Eames’ shoulder was enough further south on his body--

“You’re thinking too much,” Eames said, and Arthur bit him once for impertinence and then again because he could, because of the thrilling little sound that escaped Eames’ mouth at the scrape of Arthur’s teeth, the way Eames’ hands slid down his back and clung to him.

“You always think too much,” Eames said, voice softening as Arthur continued with his buttons. “I can see it on your face.”

“And you talk too much, so I guess we’re even,” Arthur said, undoing one final button and pushing Eames further back, so his knees gave out and they both fell to the bed.

“You intend to make me stop?”

“I intend to make you _quiet_ ,” Arthur said, and when Eames remained passive, staring up at Arthur with lazy, languid eyes, Arthur sat up and began undoing the buttons of his own shirt, because he needed this and he could see Eames did too and even Eames was not going to get on with it then Arthur very well was.

“You’re quite--” Eames said, eyes hooded. “Impatient, aren’t you?”

“And you’re no help at all,” Arthur said, shoving him in the shoulder. “One would think I really was your page, with all the undressing I’ve been doing.”

Eames shifted his hips upwards, then, and lifted a brow.

“I could use some help with my trousers, if that’s what you’re offering,” he said.

“I’m not,” Arthur said, but reached down to undo Eames’ trousers anyway, then, grappled with the closures and tugged them down. “One would think you weren’t the one who suggested this.”

“One would _think_ ,” Eames echoed. “That you were quite desperate to get at my cock.”

Arthur just rolled over so he was above Eames and pressed their hips together until their bodies and motions fell into something near alignment, though still not quite--not quite--Eames reached up to cup Arthur’s ass and pull them closer together. Eames was hard already, obviously more interested than his behavior might suggest, and the friction is a thrill, if an insufficient one. Arthur rolled his hips again, and looked down at Eames, who had one tooth caught on his lip. Eames liked this, Arthur thought, and it didn’t matter because this wasn’t about what anyone of them _liked_ , it was about getting off in the sort of quick, anonymous way one did with people they weren’t expecting a repeat performance from.

“And I thought you said you were a good lay,” Arthur continued as if Eames had not spoken.

“Oh,” Eames said, eyes alighting. “But I am.”

“I’m disinclined to believe that, when you’re just lying there,” Arthur said. “While I do all the work.”

“I just needed a moment to determine how I might serve my _prince_ ,” Eames said mildly. There was a little edge to the prince word that was matched by the glint in Eames’ eyes when he reached up, braced his arms against Arthur’s shoulders, and flipped them over.

Eames straddled Arthur and pinned him to the bed, then pulled back for a moment. Arthur’s body felt the loss of warmth keenly, and he would object to the whole thing--the pinning down, the pulling back--but the way Eames’ eyes roved his body made a new heat well up under his skin.

“You are a bit pink around the edges now, aren’t you?” Eames said, leaning forward and tripping his fingers down the center of Arthur’s chest. “And we aren’t even there yet.”

“Get on with it, then,” Arthur bit out, and Eames smiled benignly.

“I rather thought,” he said, ducking his head closer to Arthur. His eyes were dark and huge in his face, and pink was blooming across his cheeks. “We’d take it slow.”

Eames scraped his teeth along the line of Arthur’s neck, and Arthur jerked his hips upwards to make a point, something inarticulate about what a terrible idea that was. He could feel Eames against him, could tell that some parts of Eames’ body didn’t agree with his words, and because Eames was being contrary just for the sake of being contrary, because Eames was being contrary to _Arthur_ , Arthur hooked an arm around Eames back and licked his other hand, holding Eames’ gaze, before slipping it into Eames’ underthings. Eames’ breath hitched when Arthur’s fingers reached his cock and tightened around it.

“My page does know how to take care of me,” Eames said, but it came out in incomplete gasps and stutters. Arthur leaned up to bite his nipple, and then Eames released one final, moaning gasp and came all over Arthur’s hand.

Arthur stroked Eames a little longer and then Eames finally--finally--saw fit to return to the favor. He grinned a little, and pulled at Arthur’s cock with quick, hard strokes. Eames was using his grip on Arthur’s hips to lever himself lower, pulling at Arthur’s clothes until he was entirely bare, and taking Arthur in his mouth. Arthur bit his lip to keep from crying out when he came far, far too quickly, in a swirl of tongue and suction, with Eames’ eyes laughing at him through his lashes. And then Eames rolled off him and hooked a leg through Arthur’s while they both lay there, spent and completely the wrong way round to reach the pillows.

“You think too highly of yourself,” Arthur murmured, his face pressed into the coverlet.

“You’re far too impatient,” Eames said.

Arthur reached over and wiped his hand on Eames’ bare chest.

“You’ll need to bathe me,” Eames said.

“Bathe yourself,” Arthur muttered, and made a rude gesture with his free hand.

They stayed like that for awhile, and then Arthur got up and dressed and brought the plates from breakfast downstairs, and when he returned to the room Eames had dressed himself and was sitting in one of the chairs at the table. One might think nothing had happened, but Arthur could still feel the place where Eames’ fingers had gripped his hips, digging in his fingernails so hard they made curved divots in Arthur’s skin.

The second ball was much like the first, and Arthur stole a glass of wine and several of lemon liquor exclusively so he wouldn’t have to face Eames while he slept. They returned to the inn without speaking, and a vague, drunk part of Arthur wanted to tell Eames that taking him to bed was supposed to resolve issues, not make them worse, but Arthur was willing to acknowledge that was probably one of his poorer plans.

Eames kept to his own bed that night, and Arthur tried not to think that his bed felt empty when he woke up. This was the morning, the morning before the afternoon when they would go to the baths and slap a leech on the back of the king of Morrow’s neck, and at the moment that was more important than whether Arthur’s bed felt colder without Eames in it, whether Arthur could still feel the ghost of Eames’ fingertip in the soft hollows of his hips.

They both went to meet with Yusuf and Ariadne, because at that point subtlety was about the least of Arthur’s concerns, and Ariadne was babbling about some boy she’d met at the market. Arthur did a lot of things with his eyebrows in Yusuf’s general direction.

“I had to go there to find someone to bribe,” Yusuf said. “Ariadne wanted to come along.”

Arthur frowned, but it was probably a reasonably reasonable explanation, as far as these things went.

“Ariadne,” Eames was saying when Arthur stopped trying to get Yusuf to explain why he and Ariadne had needed to go out to the market. “Could you make a person part of the dream landscape? A puppet.”

Ariadne studied him for a moment before saying, “No.”

“But--”

“Explain it to him, Arthur,” Ariadne said, waving a hand imperiously. “Arthur knows.”

“People never look right, unless they’re made from a person,” Arthur said. “It’s too obviously a simulacrum.”

“Made from a person?” Eames asked.

“You can change your appearance in dreams, though it requires care and sustained focus,” Arthur said, and Eames looked thoughtful.

“I think we need Peter Browning,” Eames said. “Can you do Peter Browning?”

Arthur ran a hand through his hair and tried not to look exasperated.

“You decide this now?” he asked.

“It will be more convincing if Browning is there, in the dream,” Eames said. “And then you wouldn’t have to worry about Maurice recognizing you.”

“Arthur’s not that--” Ariadne started, but Arthur cut her off.

“I’ll do it,” he said, shaking his head and looking between the other three. “I can do it, alright?”

Ariadne was watching him closely, and Arthur could see the uncertainty etched across her face. He tried to make an expression that he would convey some combination of comfort and confidence that he could do this, that they could do this together, but Ariadne just smiled wanly at him. When he looked up both Eames and Yusuf were watching them.

“I can do it,” Arthur repeated. “I can.”

It was not an auspicious start to the day, overall, but afterwards Eames sketched out his plan for them, and the plan itself seemed like it might be good, if they were able to carry it off. But the if was there, a fragile bolt at the most important juncture of the sentence, and Ariadne was right--Arthur wasn’t that good at shifting his skin. He would’ve liked to pretend that playacting as Eames’ page had made him better, but Arthur doubted it. He’d been a spectacularly uncouth page.

The walked to the baths in silence, spread out across the streets, like they didn’t know one another. Eames held Ariadne’s hand, because Arthur and Ariadne together seemed too suspicious and she’d already been out with Yusuf enough. So Eames it was, and he was making Ariadne laugh, and Arthur was watching them when Yusuf appeared behind him.

“I thought you two weren’t like that,” Yusuf said mildly.

“I don’t know you,” Arthur said, and kept walking. He could hear Yusuf laugh behind him, and he figured being so calm was a byproduct of being a sort of mercenary alchemist whose only investment in this was money and scientific discovery.

The baths were housed in a large marble building on the edge of the city, and the pools inside were fed by pungent springs.

Yusuf’s contact met them around the back, and Yusuf gave him a leech and specific instructions, and then they waited.

The man came back around in a few moments, frowning.

“He has his son with him,” he said. “The young prince.”

There was really only one thing to do.

Yusuf gave the man another leech, and Arthur felt his stomach move in the general direction of the ground.

“Ariadne,” Arthur said. “You can stay with the prince, can’t you? Just--do something fun with him. Distract him.”

Nearly everyone looked skeptical, at that, but it was the only thing Arthur could think to do, and it would just have to work, wouldn’t it.

“His name is Robert,” Arthur added as an aside, in case Ariadne had forgotten. “Just be his friend.”

They pressed their own leeches to the back of their necks, one by one, and Arthur felt sleep overtake him. Whatever Yusuf put in the leeches, it was akin to being bludgeoned.

 

_Ariadne thrusts her vision into the dream, so that as soon as Arthur opens his eyes he is in a warren of red canyons completely devoid of vegetation. Windows are carved into the walls, so it might be a canyon or perhaps a city made entirely of red brick and stone. Arthur pulls Peter Browning on like a skin, and turns around to find Yusuf, Ariadne and Eames watching him. He can feel himself--feel Browning--wavering, clenches his hands and his forehead, and clings to the vision of Browning as he recalls it, then exhales. It will hold, he thinks, hopes._

_He looks for Maurice and the son but does not spy them immediately, and then he gestures for the others to follow and the four of them begin to rove down the canyons._

_It is Ariadne who catches Arthur by the tail of his jacket, and waves towards a gap in the cliff face._

_“Someone,” she says, and Arthur goes through the door with Ariadne trailing after. He wants to catch her hand in his, but he is Peter Browning--he can already feel his hand going funny, too thin, too young. He fixes that._

_There’s a flicker of movement in the corner of the room, and then there is a small, brunet boy._

_“Where’s father, Uncle Browning?” he says, and Arthur stutters a little, and then Ariadne comes out from behind him and beams, “Hello, Robert!”_

_“I--” Arthur starts, then just shoves Ariadne forward. “I’ve brought you a friend.”_

_“Ariadne,” Robert says, looking pleased._

_“I’ll go fetch your father,” Arthur tells Robert._

_“I met Robert at the market,” Ariadne tells Arthur._

_Robert just looks somewhere between bemused and pleased._

_“Look what I can do,” Ariadne says, and Arthur takes that as his cue to leave._

_“Ariadne met Robert at the market,” Arthur tells Eames and Yusuf when they reconvene._

_“How very convenient that I brought her along,” Yusuf says brightly._

_They continue to move, and Arthur sends out ropes of consciousness into the dream, looking for Maurice, until Eames reaches for him and says, “You’re losing it a bit, there,” which means Arthur needs to pull Peter Browning back on as best he can, like a suit he’s wearing askew. Eames watches him curiously as he does so, and then Arthur feels rather than sees him shift, and there’s another Browning standing besides him._

_“What,” Arthur says. “How.”_

_“Not so hard,” Eames says, then steps forward before turning to look back at Arthur. “We can tag team him.”_

_Eames’ lips twist into a smirk._

_“Your mouth,” Arthur says, touching his own and feeling distantly pleased. “It’s wrong.”_

_Eames’ frowns, and shortly enough his own mouth vanishes from Browning’s face._

_Yusuf shakes his head, looking between them._

_“Shall I go back to the children?” he says._

_Eames’ grin turns vicious._

_“Yes,” he says, looking down the canyon. “Change of plans, everyone. And tell Robert you’re Ariadne’s uncle.”_

_Yusuf laughs, at that, and then he fades away and Arthur and Eames go forward._

_“Tell me the plan,” Arthur says, and Eames laughs. It’s his own laugh, pitched low and husky, but it shifts somewhere midway through before Arthur has a chance to point that out._

_“There are two of us,” he says. “Two-faced. What’s more untrustworthy than that?”_

_“That’s all?” Arthur asks, and Eames turns to look at him._

_“It will work,” he says, and Arthur nods. He wants to do something, to show he believes that--press his hand into Eames’, perhaps--but in the moment it doesn’t feel right, to do that, and then he sees Maurice._

_“My King,” Arthur says, affecting his best simper._

_“Maurice,” Eames says flatly, and Arthur can see Maurice’s eyes flinch between them and hopes, desperately, that this will work as it ought._

_“The little prince--” Arthur begins, moving to Maurice’s right._

_“The horrid creature,” Eames interjects, taking the left. “Awful boy.”_

_“He has sent me to fetch you,” Arthur finishes._

_“But we wished to talk about the water,” Eames whispers, leaning forward. “The water from Cadere.”_

_“The water--” Maurice begins, then draws back._

_“I’ve found a witch,” Arthur says._

_“I am a witch,” Eames says._

_“The water,” Maurice repeats. “Why isn’t it?”_

_“What?” Arthur asks, quicker and harsher than he meant to._

_Maurices shakes his head._

_“Witches can’t stomach water,” he says, twisting around. “Where is it?”_

_Arthur stares at Eames around Maurice’s head, though he can’t quite determine what’s being said, or why. That’s not true, about the water._

_“Don’t you trust me?” Eames hisses at Maurice._

_“Not since the girl,” Maurice says. He sounds distantly frantic. “I don’t trust anyone, not since--”_

_It’s Arthur who leans forward and says, “Everyone’s a witch, Maurice.”_

_Maurice pulls away and turns to look at him with wide, wild eyes, rears back like he’s been bit, and then Eames is at his other side, stroking his back, saying, “No one is. It’s just a story.”_

_Eames is looking at Arthur, as he says it, and his eyes have gone back to being his own, set in the wrong face._

_“The water--” Maurice says, thin and distant. “I should be safe.”_

 

And then, suddenly, Arthur was being ripped out of the dream--torn from it, tugged by the scruff of his neck, and he was out, and he was wide awake, and he was gasping for air.

“You really thought I wouldn’t find out?” Peter Browning was saying. “I wouldn’t recognize the _prince_ of _Cadere_ because he was dressed like a commoner?”

Arthur choked. He couldn’t see the others, and he whirled in a futile attempt to understand where he was and what was happening. He was leaning against a wall, and his wrists were tied behind his back, with a rope that chafed. Peter Browning was standing in front of him. He could see no one else. They were--in the baths, as near as Arthur could figure. The floors and walls were tiled, and from where he was sitting he could see green water and marble pillars, which dimly coalesced into what must be baths.

“Bit inconvenient, don’t you think?” Browning said. “That you have to be asleep to do your--” Browning waved his hand in a sharp, disparaging gesture. “Makes you _vulnerable_.”

Browning grinned with all his teeth, and his gums.

“They’ll know I’m gone,” Arthur said. “They’ll wake up.”

“Quickly enough, though?”

“Where’s Maurice?” Arthur asked. “Your King? Where’s the prince?”

“I take care of these things,” Browning said mildly. “And I’ll deal with you same way I did your cousin. And then your sister--”

“Don’t,” Arthur said, and it came out as an almost involuntary gasp. Browning laughed, and all Arthur could do was stare at him and feel at the ties at his wrist, futilely hoping the knot was poorly tied. 

“I have to admit, I didn’t expect you to have quite so many assistants,” Browning continued. “And I certainly didn’t expect you to bring the little princess. But, really, with both heirs gone--I suspect Cadere will just roll right over, don’t you?”

Arthur stilled, and stared up at Browning.

“No,” he said. “We won’t.”

“Then I’ll take your water,” Browning said, ever mild.

“You can’t,” Arthur said.

“Ah, but I can,” a smile twisted across Browning’s face. “A demonstration, if you like.”

Arthur looked at him. Nothing was happening, and then everything was: the water in the pools was rising. Browning had removed something from his coat--a piece of metal, shaped like a fork, and it was vibrating and the waters were rising.

“It works like the tides, dear boy,” Browning said. “Except, I have been reliably informed, not at all. Now then, I think it’s time you drowned. Witches can’t stomach water, you know.”

“That’s not even--”

“True?” Browning said mildly. “Of course not. But everyone drowns, given appropriate circumstances.”

Browning stepped forward, and Arthur figured that it was as good a time as any to begin thrashing about.

And then there were footsteps on the tile, splashing in the rising water.

“Here they are, then,” Browning said mildly, turning away from Arthur and towards the hall. “I wonder who will be first?”

It was not who Arthur expected, and, judging from the slightly falter in Browning’s stance, it wasn’t who he had expected, either.

It was Ariadne and Robert. They both looked so small, Ariadne’s skirts sodden at the hem and Robert wearing only a robe.

“Robert,” Browning scolded. “You weren’t to help them.”

“Sorry, Uncle,” Robert said.

“You know your little friend’s a witch,” Browning said, studying the pair of them.

“What are you doing with the water?” Ariadne interjected, staring at the device in Browning’s hands.

“Simple alchemy, little princess,” Browning said.

“You’re a _princess_?” Robert asked looking at Ariadne.

“And a witch,” Browning added, but Robert gave him a withering look.

“I knew _that_.”

Browning had an expression on his face that suggested that this was not the way he expected things to go, and the water had stopped rising.

“That’s my brother,” Ariadne said, to Robert, then she continued, speaking to Browning. “Let Arthur go.”

“And why should I do that?” Browning asked. He sounded amused, and it roused Arthur, because Ariadne _shouldn’t be here_ , he had brought her here,

“Ariadne,” was what he came up with. “Get Eames and Yusuf. Go back to Cadere. Tell them--”

“Arthur,” she said, softly. “I’m here.”

And then she tackled Peter Browning.

She went for the knees, and Browning let out a cry before he crumpled to the ground, grappling at Ariadne. But Ariadne slipped out of his grasp, and then Arthur could see her hands, on the back of his neck, pressing something to the skin.

“There,” she said, as Peter Browning slumped into sleep.

Arthur stared at her.

“Come on,” Ariadne said, going over to Arthur and helping him to his feet. “We need to go.”

“How did you?”

“I kept the leech I made,” Ariadne said. “In my pocket. Thanks for helping, Robert.”

“You’re a princess?” Robert asked again.

“Take the--thing,” Arthur said. “The thing Browning had, get it. You can’t cut these ropes off my wrists?”

“Of course I’m a princess,” Ariadne said to Robert as she freed the piece of metal from Browning’s grip. “But we need to go. Bye.”

“Will it be a problem?” Arthur asked Robert. “When he wakes up?”

“I’m a _prince_ ,” Robert said, gazing at Arthur with supreme disdain.

“So am I,” Arthur said, but Ariadne was already dragging him down the corridor, then into another, and then to a room where Eames and Yusuf had apparently been locked, judging by the shocked way they blinked at Arthur and Ariadne when the door swung open.

“Arthur,” Eames said, in a sudden rush of breath.

“What happened?” Yusuf asked.

“Ariadne saved us,” Arthur said, and it came out bewildered. “Does anyone have a knife?” 

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Ariadne muttered. “And you all could thank me sometime this week.”

“Here,” Eames said, extracting a knife from somewhere and proffering it. Arthur turned and offered him his wrists, and soon the ropes dropped off. Arthur ducked and pulled Ariadne into a hug.

“Thank you,” he said into her hair. “Thank you.”

“And Robert,” she said.

“He’s not here,” Arthur said. “Let’s go.” 

They didn’t run so much as they walked very quickly, collected their clothing, their carriages and carts, and left the city before the sun hit the horizon in the west.

“I liked him, Robert,” Ariadne whispered to him when they were in the street.

“He’s fine,” Arthur said, keeping one hand on her shoulder. If he told this story true his eyes were probably on Eames’ back at the time, because then they were done and Eames had been there and Arthur still wanted to clutch his shoulders and hold on forever, against all odds.

“What happened?” Eames asked as they packed up. “We woke up, in that room, and you were gone--we heard Ariadne, but.”

Arthur told him, and while he spoke he fingered the piece of metal Ariadne had pressed into his hand before they parted.

“I guess we should’ve had someone sitting watch,” Arthur said, when he finished, and Eames smiled at him in a wry, soft way that carved away at Arthur’s last slivers of self control.

“We thought--” Eames started, then rephrased: “ _I_ thought--” and before he could go further it slid together in Arthur’s mind, what Eames was trying to say, Eames’ reaction when Arthur and Ariadne had opened the door, the way he said Arthur’s name, the relief that washed across his face. 

Arthur’s self control disintegrated entirely, and he slipped across the carriage to straddle Eames, surging forward and pressing him against the back wall of the carriage and running his tongue against Eames’ lips until they opened for him like a door. Eames’ arms found their way around Arthur’s waist and pulled him in, and it was so comfortable, warm and close and _safe_. They sat like that for a moment, still, and then Arthur pressed their foreheads together and their lips met again, warm and wet and sweet. 

This, with Eames, was the easiest thing Arthur could think to do, simple and clear and guaranteed to wipe all thoughts from his mind, even if it made things worse, later. That thought gave him pause, and he draw back almost imperceptibly.

“You think too much,” Eames said into his mouth, and pulled him back in. Arthur pressed a kiss to Eames’ jaw, and then another, lower. 

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said, and hoped Eames understood that he was, really, even if Arthur was saying it to Eames’ shoulder and not his face. “I shouldn’t have.”

“I wanted to,” Eames said, and suddenly he pushed Arthur away, far enough that Arthur felt the loss Eames’ warmth. Eames was looking at Arthur, eyes somewhere between thoughtful and angry. “You aren’t the only one who gets to decide, Arthur.”

“But I’m--” Arthur started, and Eames reached forward and grasped his shoulders before he could continue.

“Don’t say it,” Eames said, leaning forward. “Any of it.”

“Do you remember,” Arthur started mildly. “Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but do you remember the time, not so very long ago, when my being a prince and a witch was an immense stumbling block for you? Because I seem to recall--”

“And now it’s a stumbling block for you,” Eames said, and pressed a kiss to Arthur’s lips. Arthur pulled back.

“Mal haunts Dominic because they dreamed together,” he said.

“You aren’t Mal,” Eames said. “Nor are you dead.”

“I can’t--” Arthur started.

“But I rather think you want to,” Eames said, and the light in the carriage was getting dim and casting long shadows across his face, making his eyes dark and intractable.

Arthur _did_ want to, and Eames was giving him explicit permission, and a moment ago Arthur had been sitting in his lap and he rather missed that, but the fact remained--he turned his head and looked out the window in the carriage door, at hills cast in dim light.

“I’m expected to be betrothed soon,” he said. “It’s not fair to you.”

“I think I’ll decide what’s fair for me, cheers,” Eames said, and when he kissed Arthur again it was both quiet and angry, soft for a moment before Eames was biting Arthur’s lower lip and threading his hands through Arthur’s hair to tug enough to make Arthur release a muffled cry into his mouth.

“Ariadne and I will be back in the palace tomorrow,” Arthur said, drawing back.

“And I’ll be in the barracks until they put me back on border patrol,” Eames replied, and ducked his head forward to lick the edge of Arthur’s collarbone. Arthur moaned and grasped at the shirt on Eames’ back until Arthur could pull it up and slide his hands along his bare skin. 

“And I’ll know what it sounds like when the prince moans like a common trollop,” Eames said, looking up at Arthur through his lashes. “So that’s alright.”

Arthur didn’t dignify that with a reply, just reached for Eames’ trousers again and fiddled with the closures until they were loose, and then Arthur knelt on the floor of the carriage as it rattled along, ran his tongue along the underside of Eames’ cock and made Eames shut up, for once, despite the unique difficulties involved in blowing someone while riding a carriage driving on a deeply rutted road. He kept his eyes on Eames’ face, on the line of his brow and the curve of his lips, and he wasn’t sure what he was seeing there until Eames pulled him up, after, wrapped Arthur up in his arms and kissed his ear and said, in a voice that cracked, “And I’ll know you aren’t dead. So there’s that, too.”

That hit Arthur liked a punch low in the gut, and he wrapped his own arms around Eames, as tightly as he could, buried his face in Eames’ chest and breathed him in.

“I’m sorry,” he said, again, and it came out so small and muffled that Arthur hardly heard it, himself, so he doubted Eames did, and then sitting like that grew uncomfortable, and so Arthur slid away.

They were back in Cadere the next afternoon, and Arthur waved to Yusuf and Eames before he took Ariadne’s hand and walked through the palace gates. Eames seemed placid, but Yusuf was squinting at Arthur and wearing a very peculiar expression, one Arthur found supremely difficult to interpret.

It didn’t matter, Arthur thought was he turned his back, as the gates swung shut behind them with a heavy groan. No one had said, “Perhaps we’ll meet at Tansy’s;” none of them had even discussed whether they had accomplished anything or not. It was done.

That did not explain why Arthur felt hollow at the end of it, when he was back in his chambers and curled into his bed (too large, too soft, still). His parents were pleased to see he and Ariadne again, and they would have to attend the harvest festivities in the capital in two days’ time. There would be a diplomatic mission south across the sea in a few months--of course Arthur would be on the ship. Of course. So Arthur curled into his bed and went about cleaving his thoughts from Eames, because that seemed the sensible thing to do. Usually doing the sensible thing satisfied Arthur in a vague, clean way, but this time around it felt like he was trying to make a clean cut down the center of his own chest so he could extract his organs, one by one, and lay them out for the world to see.

He dreamt, that night.

 

_Arthur is sitting atop the palace gate, and it’s swinging open and shut beneath him. It’s strangely comfortable--comforting--like riding on a ship. Additionally, it affords Arthur the opportunity to watch everyone who enters or leaves the palace, so he watches._

_He’s not sure how much time passes while he’s perched on the gate and doesn’t worry about it much because he knows what he’s waiting for will come, eventually. He is waiting, he realizes, not just watching--waiting for something specific._

_It is Eames--of course it is. That shouldn’t come as any surprise at all. Eames is standing outside the gate, looking up._

_“Hello,” Arthur says, and coming down from the gate. It should really be too far to jump. He jumps anyway._

_Eames is standing before him, looking strange and uncertain. He’s dressed as he was when Arthur last saw him._

_“It’s just clothes,” Arthur says, looking at Eames. “It’s just--clothes.” Arthur can say these things, even though they’re just this side of nonsensical because this isn’t really Eames, just some odd bit of his dream shaped into human form. It’s okay, it’s safe. He tugs at Eames’ shirt._

_“We could, you know,” Arthur continues. “If it weren’t for our--clothes.”_

_“We could what?” Eames asks, which startles Arthur a little._

_“We could try,” Arthur says, gesturing between them. “That’s what people do, right? They try?”_

_Eames is looking at him._

_“Try what?” Eames asks._

_“This,” Arthur says, with so much conviction he hardly recognizes his own voice. “We could try this Eames.”_

_Eames is looking at him._

 

Arthur woke up and rolled over, pressing his face into the pillow. It was a stupid thing, really, a stupid thing to want: not Eames, but the chance to try with him, not to leave him behind like chaff, like something that had served its purpose and was no longer needed. That wasn’t the intention, but that was plainly in the process of happening--may already have happened, actually.

And Eames was no one Arthur expected to wait around. He had wanted Arthur while he did, and Arthur had sent him off to the barracks and turned his back, shut the gate. It was plain: Eames would find someone else, Arthur was certain of it, because Eames seemed like someone who moved on easily and he was, besides, the sort of person another person might _want_ if they were in the business of wanting. And Arthur--Arthur would be betrothed to someone who could produce the needed heirs. The second part was a story Arthur had known forever, one Arthur had always used to shut doors and close off opportunities and tell himself it was okay, really, about Vernon.

Somehow, still, it hurt more now.

He took breakfast in his chambers because he could, but Ariadne came bustling in when Arthur was staring at the bottom of the empty bowl that had contained his risotto.

“Do you think it worked?” she asked.

“Can’t tell yet, can we?” Arthur said, and forced a grin. Ariadne looked at him curiously before clasping his hand and demanding they go to the stables to check on the hounds.

“The pups are big now,” she said. “ _Huge_. They grow up so fast.”

“That they do,” Arthur said, ruffling her hair. Ariadne frowned at him.

“Don’t condescend,” she said. “It’s rude.”

“Of course it is,” Arthur agreed, and allowed Ariadne to lead him down to the stables, where he scratched several dogs behind the ears and tried not to think too hard about much of anything.

“Yusuf is coming,” Ariadne said. “To meet us. I thought we could give him the water--thing. As payment.”

Arthur looked at her. It felt like he’d forgotten more about her than he ever knew, because looking at her then she seemed both smarted and older than Arthur himself.

“That’s a good idea,” he said, and Ariadne nodded.

“Of course it is,” she said.

He scratched the dogs some more, and then Yusuf was there.

“Ariadne said you had something for me?” he asked, studying Arthur.

“The thing,” Arthur said, fishing it from his pocket. “The thing Peter Browning used on the water.” He handed it to Yusuf. “Browning said it worked like the tides. And when he used it it vibrated, somehow.”

Yusuf nodded, turning it over in his hands.

“Thank you,” he said. “This will be quite sufficient payment.”

“I named the dogs,” Ariadne said, and then proceeded to tell Yusuf their names. Yusuf smiled and knelt down besides her, admiring the hounds. It was only when he got up to leave that he turned back to Arthur.

“You know,” he said. “It’s funny that you’d trust me with this and you wouldn’t trust him.”

“It was her, mostly,” Arthur said, nodding to Ariadne, who’s talking animatedly with a stablehand.

“Well, maybe she’s smarter than you,” Yusuf said.

“Probably,” Arthur agreed.

Yusuf paused, studying Arthur’s face.

“I haven’t seen him like this before,” he said, finally. “So you should probably ignore anything I said when we first met.”

“Okay,” Arthur said, not entirely sure what he was agreeing to. When Yusuf left Arthur went to sit with Ariadne, who had been abandoned by the stablehand and was sitting with dogs again.

“You were talking about Eames,” she stated.

“You’re too smart by half,” Arthur said.

“Just because I know more than you,” Ariadne said, and Arthur looped an arm around her shoulder. 

“I shouldn’t have brought you to Morrow,” he said.

“But I loved it,” Ariadne replied. “I’m going to the ball next year, and I’m going to see Robert.”

“You are, are you?” Arthur asked, and turned to look at her.

“Arthur,” Ariadne said. “It’s okay. You know it’s okay, don’t you? You just needed me to say it.”

“Browning could’ve--” Arthur started.

“No,” Ariadne said. “He couldn’t have.”

She leaned against him, and she was so small, there, and she had saved his life. It was a strange contrast.

“If I told Mother and Father that I didn’t want to be Crown Prince--” Arthur started.

“I would,” Ariadne said, before he could finish.

“Think about it,” Arthur said. “Think about what it means.”

“I know what it means,” Ariadne said. “I’ve been following you around for _years_. And besides, you’d be there to help me, wouldn’t you?”

Arthur pulled her closer, squeezing her shoulder.

“Yes,” he said. “I might travel but--I guess I would. Just--think about it, for a day or two. It’s not a light thing.”

“I know,” Ariadne said. “I will.”

Then one of the dogs licked her on the cheek, and she laughed and pulled away from Arthur to scratch its belly. He didn’t see how she could be so young and so old, both at once, but he was grateful for it, and laughed with her. 

Arthur lay in bed that night, looking at the darkness above his head, wondering if he’d rather see Eames or not when he closed his eyes. 

 

_Of course Eames is there, sitting on a rock by the riverbank. He’s watching the water, which is proper loud, and he doesn’t hear Arthur approach._

_“Hello,” Arthur says, sitting down next to him._

_“You’ve been saying that rather a lot lately,” Eames replies._

_“Well, yes,” Arthur says. “It’s nice to see you here.”_

_The river is rising by increments, and then by more, overtaking its banks so quickly and subtly that Arthur isn’t fully aware of it until the water’s at his feet, and then it startles him a little, and he reaches out for Eames’ hand, catching it in his own. Eames looks at him questioningly before closing his fingers around Arthur’s._

_“I know,” Arthur says. “I’m not the only one who gets to decide. But I thought--we could try. Together. If you still wanted to--”_

_Arthur laughs, self-conscious._

_“I don’t know why I’m telling you this here,” he says. “You aren’t--let’s go.”_

_He gets up, pulls Eames with him. They walk. Rota and Chilk are waiting for them._

 

Arthur and Ariadne both had to wear ceremonial sashes for the harvest festival, embroidered in brown and gold. Ariadne wore hers over her new blue dress, and she smiled exuberantly at Arthur when she burst into his room in the morning.

“You’re lovely,” he said, looping his own sash about his waist. “It is a very nice dress. I’m sorry you couldn’t wear it to the ball.”

“I still met the prince,” Ariadne said. “Isn’t that what princesses are supposed to go to balls for?”

“Also to dance,” Arthur suggested.

“There will be dancing at the harvest festival, though,” Ariadne said. “And none of that dull dancing, either.”

“Save one for me,” Arthur told her, reaching down to adjust her tiara.

“I will,” she said, grinning up at him.

“Let’s go, then,” Arthur said, offering her a hand.

The harvest festival during the day was mostly an excuse for a vast and ridiculous bustle of vendors to overtake the city, and everyone who wasn’t selling something to wander about aimlessly and gossip outrageously. But it was also a venue for mingling, and it was tradition for the royal family to attend, to wear their sashes and to speak to anyone who wanted to. It had always overwhelmed Arthur when he was younger, but he’d grown increasingly fond of the tradition, even if it left he and Ariadne standing with a woman and talking about her marigolds, it was still--pleasant. Good. Better, certainly, than shipping in a pack of royals from other kingdoms and refusing to talk to anyone _but_ them.

When Eames appeared, though, Arthur would have rather not been talking about marigolds. The woman, with the marigolds, was a good head shorter than Arthur, and he could see past her easily. His eyes had spent the better part of the morning snagging on broad-shouldered, towheaded men, and here was this one, the _right_ one, stepping out from an alley and into the street and then standing there, staring at them and holding Arthur’s gaze. Eames looked neat and strange, but also absolutely, completely, like himself, and it made Arthur want to take his circlet off, there in the street, and let it fall to the ground.

“Excuse me,” Arthur said to the woman with the marigolds, waving a hand. “I just--”

He gestured vaguely at Eames, and the woman smiled at Arthur and squeezed his arm.

“Of course!” she said. “I’m sure you two are quite in demand. You’ve been such dears--”

Arthur moved towards Eames, but Ariadne reached up to catch his arm and draw him back.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure.”

Arthur turned to look at her, and she nodded once.

“Okay,” Arthur said, and squeezed her hand. “Okay, then.”

He turned back towards Eames, stepped forward. They were close--quite close, really--when Eames took a step forward then dropped to his knee to kiss Arthur’s knuckles. It was--

“Ah,” Arthur said as Eames straightened up. “Hello.”

“You’ve been saying that rather a lot lately,” Eames said.

Arthur blinked at him. Eames just smiled, lips curving into a genuine grin--a _beautiful_ grin, if Arthur is frank, pink lips framed by stubble.

“You were--” he started.

“It’s strange how quickly a thing starts to feel normal,” Eames said, and Arthur wanted to tell him that this was _awful_ actually, they were too enmeshed too quickly and things could only go badly from here, because they shouldn’t be able to share dreams when one of them was in the palace and the other in the barracks, but then Arthur pushed that all aside with as much temerity as he could muster. He reached down for Eames’ hand and brought it to his lips, held Eames’ eyes while he pressed a kiss to Eames’ knuckles.

“Shall we try, then?” Arthur asked. Eames’ twisted his hand into Arthur’s so their fingers were twined together and pulled him closer.

“Prince,” he started, and Arthur shook his head.

“About that,” he said. “Ariadne’s going to take the crown--”

“Still a prince,” Eames said softly, and they were so close it was almost unbearable, standing there on the cobblestones, exposed to the sun and everyone else.

“But you want to try--” Arthur said. “This isn’t just me.”

“It’s never just you,” Eames said, voice soft and husky. “That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

It was Arthur, then, who went that infinitesimal final distance to press their lips together, and for once when they kissed it was both gentle and bruisingly perfect and in precisely, precisely, the right place.

  



End file.
